In nature, a family is a delicate and often intricate ecosystem where some will thrive even under strong winds while others are blown away by the slightest breeze. A couple that has stayed together for over ten years is forced to consider how their break up would affect not only their individual lives but also their two sons who have built a close-knit world around each other in Babak Khajehpasha’s “In the Arms of the Tree”. Although it focuses on an isolated family in rural Iran, Khajehpasha’s film still has a lot of heartfelt truth inside it through its simple proposition.
Kimia and Farid (Maral Baniadam and Javad Ghamati) have broken up with each other. Actually, their lives are quite apart as they spend time running different businesses that they acquire during the years of their marriage. Nevertheless, their two minor children, Taha and Alisan (Ahoura Lotfi and Rayan Lotfi), still join them together. The boys practically act as one body with Taha playing a role of an older brother to little Alisan. This duo is so close that sometimes it seems that they are attached at their hips: they play games together on the fields to amuse themselves; then later lay down beside each other for a nap in bed, as if sharing the same urges every day.
Kimia starts to make plans for divorcing Farid, and it becomes obvious that the brothers will also be separated. However, neither parent can quite bring themselves to break this news to the boys who spend their days being babysat by their uncle Reza (Rouhollah Zamani), an unrequitedly love-stricken young man who is probably not the most responsible person around. He absolutely loves these boys and takes his cues from their wide-eyed view of the world. But he still does some things that are a little bit exploitative and earn him some money on the side. One day he gets them to recruit other children in betting money on such a dangerous game as staying at the railway track when train comes towards you.
As with many moments in “In The Arms Of The Tree,” lurking danger is at its heart. It’s the feeling that something could go very wrong if the boys and everyone else around them isn’t careful enough. Divorce itself and what follows obviously poses one danger but Khajehpasha’s screenplay tries to endow it with a physical menace.
Taha and Alisan’s most important fear is that their carefully constructed world may crumble, putting them in a real danger. The last part of this film gets engulfed by this fear. And it finally destroys Khajehpasha’s carefully built world as the two brothers are used to portray how parents who love their children can go any mile to get them back.
Mostly shot outdoors in fish farms and flower fields, on busy streets and crowded markets, and many times around the type of trees its title refers to, Khajehpasha’s feature is teeming with nature. Long takes bathed in twinkling sunshine often put us in the naivety of Taha and Alisan. As if they were still innocent, this idea also imagined their untouched innocence in a way of being in the world together with each other. And it is that pleasant naiveté that makes the movie become more rapid melodrama when Kimia’s secrets (what is essentially seems to be her root to why she cannot stand Farid) explode what Khajehpasha has been slowly painting as a gentle family drama.
Maybe the film is too soothing. Not saccharine, but surely non-offensive who would want anything bad to happen to these boys, this family or this community after all? By obsessional placement of a broken family (and maybe bringing them together again), “In the Arms of the Tree” goes overboard with sentimentality. At the 41st Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran, Khajehpasha actor-director scooped awards for best screenplay, best director and best first film thus positioning this slight family drama as Iran’s entry into this year’s international feature race at the Academy Awards. There’s a lot of prettiness here and an excellent ability to elicit convincing performances (not just from the children; Baniadam comes across as a mother unravelling under fears she can’t quell), but little beyond well-trodden paths of Iranian domesticity.
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