Arthur Brennan has recently lost his
wife (Naomi Watts) to cancer and a tragic auto accident and he’s decided he
should find “the perfect place to die,” where he might kill himself to show his
dead wife that he really loved her despite all their grievances. He flies to
Japan (one-way ticket, no luggage—sort of a dead giveaway for his reason to go
there) where, at the base of Mount Fuji, he enters a park, a sea of trees where
others before him have gone to end their lives.
The story is told in a series of
flashbacks to show us what his marriage was like before and after his wife’s
death. On his trek into this vast parkland and just as he is about to take his
life with drugs he’s brought with him, he meets a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe)
who is in much pain from various wounds, apparently from his own attempt to
kill himself. He helps the man, even giving him CPR when he loses consciousness.
Together, both now deciding for life instead of death, they try to find their
way back to the parking area. After much stumbling and falling they find a
small tent left behind by someone who has successfully killed himself where
they take shelter from the heavy rainfall. Brennan makes the difficult decision
to leave his exhausted companion behind to find a way out of the forest, vowing
to the man that he would come back for him.
Gus Van Sant directed, and one would
think that someone who has Good Will
Hunting and Milk under his
director’s belt that he might have done better with this one. Wrong again. As I
said at the beginning, the film was somewhere between not very good and not too
bad, sort of that middle ground where low-budget films go to die. Or, in this
case, go into a sea of trees.
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