"It is said a flower grows when a soul has crossed over from this place"

Gus Van Sant's The Sea of Trees is one of the most perplexing movies I have seen in a good while, but it isn't perplexing in the way you might think. It's a movie where things happen but nothing of actual worth seems to occur in the "plot". Speaking of "plot", I'm not even sure The Sea of Trees actually has one. Like I said, things happen but barely any have any meaning towards an overall "narrative" until the final moments of the film. Entire sections of the film become superfluous, namely the plot of the flashback sections, after the first of I think two, maybe, plot twists Van Sant throws at us with no bearing whatsoever. McConaughey and Watanabe have conversations that don't mean anything for lengthy periods of time yet the one that might actually matter to the theme we end on is given barely even a minute of screen time.

The Sea of Trees is one of the most fascinatingly awful movies ever made. It is a true enigma into how not to make a film. I mean, the acting is fine and some of the shots looks nice, if a little too on the nose at times, but there's so much that doesn't work here that it's hard to pinpoint what went wrong. This is truly a movie for the ages, but not in the way Van Sant thought it would be.

You still get this Vine though
vine.co/v/5bDIV0rtUxL