First off their eye for detail was pretty weak- it was obviously cut down with a chainsaw or at the very least some sort of pull saw- anyone who has felled timber can see that, and most people should be able to guess that by the obvious- a tree felled with an ax will not leave a straight cut.
Secondly- it's interesting that such a socially conscious message movie would involve the real life felling of a tree in order to broadcast their message.
Well it looked fairly genuine to me. The clean cuts looked like the work of an axe rather than hacked by a saw. The cutting seemed to be done by a fine axeman using a good axe. A saw would have left a flat, plane cut not the slightly curved one. The steps of axe work can be seen on the top of the stump. Also, the pattern on the bark at the top of the stump matches the pattern of the trunk when the axe started chopping. A fine, healthy tree can be seen falling down and knocking up dust. It would probably be used for firewood in the nearby homestead.
Yes, it was an interesting message. I'm sure it would have disturbed a lot of people.
PS: For the record, I rated this film 6/10 - not bad. An interesting precept; acting was sometimes a little melodramatic; good time-lapse panning earned it an extra point.
You're a tough critic. This movie brought something new to table and I always appreciate that. You're right that the photography added a lot, and it wasn't just the time-lapse stuff.
As to cutting down the tree, I'm no expert but your description rings true for me. This was also a eucalyptus tree which is very soft wood, so chopping it down seemed possible, though obviously not easy. The only thing that looked wrong for me was that the stump ended up much taller than I was expecting. I can't see how she could have cut it that high.
The scene did disturb me a bit because of the loss of something old and beautiful, but especially because she hurt him deeply by deliberately killing something that he loved.
That scene disturbed me as well. She went out of her way to hurt him by cutting down the very tree that meant so much to him. They didn't just happen upon the tree - she asked him to show it to her. I get that she was hurting that she was so far from home, but how does hurting him make her feel better? I also found it ironic that she was hurting the environment by chopping down the tree. At least when she pulled the cables from the car engine, it prevented more exhaust into the environment and she also knew there was another way to travel around.
I had completely forgotten this movie so I watched it again just now. From this discussion and close examination, it is clear that her main reason for cutting down his tree was to show what would happen if she stayed on Earth. Her effect on the environment from simply living would absolutely kill many trees and cause other harm. Killing his tree was the strongest way for her to communicate that. Yes, she was also hurting inside, but her intent was not to hurt him. What she hoped to do was to convince him to stop killing trees, and given the ending, she succeeded.
shareI do recall those words in the discussion but I admit I never understood them. Perhaps you could explain further -- How would her simply living kill many trees and cause other harm?
This seemed so inconsistent with the criticism throughout the "universe" about how people on earth treat the environment on this planet. If on earth, why would she think she would be the source of more destruction -- presumably causing more harm to the environment than any individual human being? Why would her impact be exactly in line with her criticism of substandard life forms on earth? Except from the standpoint that earth did not matter anyway, and this act was more her way of expressing her deep hurt and frustration for having been sent (mistakenly) to this horrible planet -- so what the heck -- make it worse?
She saw herself as an advanced life form, but it seemed she could not restrain her own emotional destructiveness. And apparently on her planet it never mattered because they could control time and do-over. Her tree chopping "communication" resulted in her losing the only thing (relationship with the man) she seemed to somewhat appreciate, so she was very poor at anticipating how her communication would come across. Hence she did a do-over. She should never have cut down the tree in my opinion because her point (whatever that was) was not effectively made. She failed, and the man terminated the relationship. It was only after the do-over that the relationship continued; she then was taken back to Epsilon, and the man became an environmentalist. Even when she described to the man that in the other timeline she had cut down his favorite tree, he could not feel the impact (the hurt) as when he experienced it.
So I come back to her explanation - that her living on earth would kill many trees. Huh?
OK, I'll try a little more because I do feel that I get it now. First forget any ideas about her lashing out due to any unpleasant emotions she may have felt. I think she fully understood what she felt and meant to and felt that cutting down the tree was the best way to say it. In other words, she would do that part all over again.
It goes back to an earlier discussion when they were looking at and talking about a forest full of dead trees. She said there was no mystery why the trees died. It was the collective pollution of everyone in that area, and that the problem was that they usually were not aware of their indirect effects, and that is what was killing the planet. It was the same reason that Earthlings were so despised. Her action was meant to make the invisible, visible. Yes, she killed a tree and felt badly about that, but if she was to live among these people, driving in cars, eating from grocery stores, etc., she would have the impact of killing many trees every year. She sacrificed a beautiful tree to teach one person an important lesson, and it worked. How could it work on a version of the man with a different timeline that did not contain the act? There was some vague thing said about how knowledge might somehow leak across timelines, but that seemed pretty bogus. The one difference could be simply that because of her experience of the event, she was more able to be just as effective without it. In other words, their love was real, and she had changed as much as him.