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Mr Tree (2011)

Director: Han Jie

Time Out rating

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Movie review

From Time Out Online

Don’t let the fact that Chinese maestro Jia Zhang-ke produced this sway you: this rural satire about the unpredictable life of a village idiot-turned-local sage suffers from undisciplined characterisations and perplexing plotting. Wang Baoqiang plays the lovable Mr Shu (literally translated as Mr Tree), a disheveled outcast unwilling to move house to make way for a dodgy mining concern. He marries a deaf mute, but she leaves him almost instantly, and the final third of the film ends up circumnavigating his various dreams and fantasies in order to explain his eccentric behaviour. It feels like a film that could’ve been ripe with deadpan humour and subtle political barbs, but director Han Jie misses trick after trick with his needlessly extravagant directorial style (ugly crane shots all the way) and sad shortfall of tangible purpose.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out Online London Film Festival 2011

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User reviews of this film

lyssi said...

Posted on Oct 21 2011 10:11 This film deserves a far better rating than the one given it by time out's reviewer who clearly missed the point about the film altogether. He was looking for the classic 3 act structure, the clarity of a plot reaching some kind of constructive goal, whereas this film is about 'disintegration,' the parallel events of the idiot savant losing his mind, increasingly unable to integrate, as he begins to tune into another dimension, and the sad inevitable dissolution of small town life and values with the encroachment of China's greedy modernisation goals to turn a sleepy village into a a gigantic mine. Great metaphor that. The story has already been discussed in the previous review so I won't talk about it here. What is truly rare and outstanding about this film is the vivid portrayal of the bonds of childhood that link all the friends to Mr tree, their ongoing comeraderie and the tender attentiveness they give to Tree who has special needs while they themselves cope with the harsh realities of life. In a lesser director, all this would have been mawkish and sentimental, but in this film, the sentiments are so well portrayed it re-established the kind of humanity in cinema that has not been seen since the 1920's which urbanisation has destroyed. The film captures that moment when everything is poised at the brink of change and one wonders what will happen to Tree when the small town life that fosters that kind of mutual support is destroyed by commerce, how will Tree cope, and is that why he is preciently losing mind. Ok so the cutting together is bit messy to suggest what's going in Tree's mind, still I think this director is a talent to watch and I look forward to his next work.

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