Reviews

What an annoying movie. Spoiler Alert! Wonderful acting with a thin script that didn't really make sense. A mother is catatonic and dysfunctional after her husband dies while her kids cope and move forward in their own ways. When the tree roots of the huge tree outside their house damage their plumbing she meets a nice man who owns a plumbing supply store, hires her to take care of the office and pulls her our of her depression. While the daughter believes the father's spirit is in the tree and the mother and a brother find comfort in the tree, the tree's roots continue to threaten their lives by splitting their water storage cistern. When the new boyfriend comes with a crew to cut it down, the daughter climbs it and refuses to come down. The mother sides with the daughter, loosing the boy friend, and when a cyclone topples the tree into the house, she looses that too. IF she had been an adult and helped her daughter deal with reality, accept death and go forward with life, she could have had a house and probably a new husband. Instead she looses the house, her job presumably and boyfriend, and appears to ride off into the sunset cheerfully. Why was that a good outcome? Her oldest son, who had held the family together while she couldn't get out of bed, was off to college. The daughter was a wonderful actress but she wasn't a wise child helping the mother out of her grief, and the mother didn't help her family. If the tree was a metaphor for the father, his spirit wasn't doing any favors by destroying their home. Good acting, beautiful scenery but pointless story. The mother behaved badly after her husband dies, and continues to behave badly after the tree destroys the house.