Review #70 THE LAST TREE (2019, Shola Amoo)

 

* * * 

A young man faces challenges growing up in London, having been suddenly transplanted there from his idyllic countryside adolescence.

Starring  Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, Ruthxjiah Bellenea

Written by  Shola Amoo

Produced by  Myf Hopkins, Lee Thomas

Duration  99 minutes

 

Trees are important. Everyone knows that: the whole taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen thing. As the Woodland Trust says, “Trees are our lungs. Trees are our guardians. Trees are our health service and wildlife champions.”

But what about trees in movies? Most of the time, they get a bad rap. If they do feature, they tend to be lumped together as a collective and portrayed negatively. They're often the scene of spooky woods (think THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), or a place where teens run to escape a maniac (countless slashers), or an isolated location for a mob hit and subsequent burial (MILLER’S CROSSING). In THE EVIL DEAD, a tree even takes the worst possible advantage of a young lady who's staying in a cabin nearby. Not nice.

But sometimes, movie trees are the good guys. ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES comes to mind. You could even call it a 'tree film', all in all, what with the Merry Men’s elaborate village high up in Sherwood Forest. Plus, all the fight scenes use arrows, which of course are made from trees.

But more than that, the 1991 movie featured one particular tree that became legendary: the Sycamore Gap next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. Early on in the movie, Kevin Costner’s Robin of Locksley and his pal Azeem (Morgan Freeman) pass the tree as they approach Nottingham (which in real life is nowhere near, but anyway). It came to be known as ‘the Robin Hood tree’ and was a popular tourist site. Then, early one morning in September 2023, it was found cut down, devastating millions of fans. Even the film’s director Kevin Reynolds chipped in, telling the BBC, “This is the second loss PRINCE OF THIEVES has suffered in the last couple of years – first Alan Rickman and now this." (Not reported: what the Rickman family made of this statement.)

The Robin Hood tree also featured in the music video for Bryan Adams' ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, a song that spent a record 16 consecutive weeks at number one in the UK Singles Chart. As such, you might expect me to hate it, but in fact I find it to be a superb power ballad that won't let go of the ’80s -- in all the best possible ways. So there.

So, this brings us to THE LAST TREE. Is it truly another 'tree movie', beyond the somewhat cryptic title? There was little hint from the synopsis I read of how exactly trees would feature. The protagonist is moving from the countryside to The Big City, so I guess an environment where there are fewer trees? (Even if in reality London has loads of parks, but I digress.) Does he miss trees in general? Was there a special tree that had come to symbolize the innocent youth he is torn away from, possibly one that he carved his name into? Or is the whole tree thing purely allegorical?

Something that was clear from what I'd read about THE LAST TREE is that this is another ‘moving to scary London’ story, and I wasn’t too keen on the last ‘last’ film about that. My hope going in was that this one would be a little more nuanced, a little less melodramatic, and much keener to acknowledge that the Capital is more than a square mile of tourist-friendly shops, restaurants and West End post-production places.

Well, the London our protagonist Femi ends up in is Walworth, sandwiched between Camberwell and Elephant & Castle. Which is fine, although I object to the south of the river being represented as gang-infested crime-hole, yet again.

Much more appreciated was that Femi is into stuff like New Order and The Cure, despite this apparently not being a period piece (they use mobile phones). When his pal asks him what he's listening to through his headphones, Femi tells him "Tupac – 'Hit 'em Up', innit?" So clearly there's a bucking of social expectations here.

But the trees! What about the trees? I decided to keep a tally of whenever they appeared and in what quantity. (Please note that many of these are estimates.)

 – Opening sequence of 10-year-old Femi and pals playing outside during magic hour, tree count: 2

– Femi plays football in the park with his mates: 12

– Femi storms off down the road after learning he has to go to Evil London to live with his birth mother: 4

– Femi in the garden for a farewell party: 3

– Montage of Femi travelling to the airport: 10

– Femi walking to his first day of school: 2

– Femi runs away from his mother after she chastises him for getting into a fight at school after a boy makes fun of his name: 3 – and a tree stump is framed prominently in the foreground!

– Femi, now a teenager who's got in with the wrong crowd, heads to school with his pals: 7

– Femi watches some fellow youths kicking a football to each other around a housing estate: 4

– Femi goes along with his mates' bullying of a girl at school, while privately disapproving: 1

 

Then there are very few trees for quite a while, as the film becomes more set at night, with Femi getting involved in drug deals, turf wars, etc. But then:

 – Femi goes back to the countryside to visit the lady who raised him, travelling by train during a contemplative montage: 20

– Femi sits with the aforementioned lady in her garden: 4

– Back in London, Femi gets the shit kicked out of him by the dealers who he thought were his friends, then staggers home with the camera strapped to him pointing at his face, like that bit in MEAN STREETS when Harvey Keitel is staggering around the bar, or in any number of Spike Lee movies: 7

– Femi and his mum visit her home country of Nigeria, travelling to a posh home through a rural area: 5

– They then go to a spiritual retreat in the outskirts of Lagos: 16, and the final instance of trees in the film.

Approximate number of trees across the whole of THE LAST TREE: 101

So, what does it all mean? Does the specific number of trees matter? Was any one in particular more significant than the others? What was the meaning behind focusing on that stump? And – most crucially – which tree was the 'last'?

Let me assure you that I've ruminated over these questions long and hard and have failed to come up with any answers.

Film was OK, though.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  See review.

What would a movie called THE FIRST TREE be about?  It's tempting to say the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that was definitely not the first to sprout up in the Garden of Eden. First famous one, though.

Previously:  I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Next time:  THE LAST MAN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com