In fairy tales, we never question why the beautiful princess is marrying a horrible prince: Part of the pact readers make with such stories is that we accept these situations at face value. In real life though, when presented with a woman joining herself to a nasty piece of work, we need to know why. Comedies aside, combining these two literary forms creates minefields for a writer because the moment disbelief spreads like mold, the most fantastically built Cinderella castle collapses. “Wandering Trees,” Salvatore Mereu‘s new three-hour film, is unmistakably part of the iconoclastic director’s world, with its almost metaphysical approach to Sardinians’ relationship to the land, but a major tonal clash between the pronounced fairy-tale structure and the realistic elements trips up his customary mastery in handling complex narratives.
Long an outlier in the Italian cinema landscape, Mereu’s films (“Assandira,” “Pretty Butterflies,” etc.) are intimately bound up in the distinct natural rhythms of his island home. Harnessing a signature cinematic eye to a near-mystical reverence for the land and its ancient traditions, he’s a filmmaker whose work stands in resistance to Italianization, like a bold sociologist fighting for a rural way of life fast becoming extinct. While he’s never shied away from narrative experimentation, he’s also never been so hampered by a fundamental misunderstanding of the dramatic contract. His sense of beauty is unsullied, his respect for nature in all its forms unshaken, but when the question “why” insistently encroaches on audience involvement, there’s a problem.
“To be friends with the animals is to be a friend and a child of the world, connected to it, nourished by it, belonging to it.” The line is Ursula K. Le Guin’s, but it could also be spoken by Piero Arca (Alessandro Haber), a man of the land — the word “peasant” in English has unfortunate connotations that don’t correspond to the Italian “contadino” — whose life is devoted to nurturing rescued animals together with his young son Giuliano (Lupo Barbiero). The boy lives in two worlds: the one at home, where donkey brays, pig squeals and a tortoise interrupt his homework, and school, like any other kid.
But for some people in the neighborhood, Giuliano and Piero aren’t like the others. Their symbiotic devotion to the land and respect for all creatures make them pariahs, targets not just of verbal attacks but threatening gunshots. Particular animosity comes from Sebastiano Nonne (Massimo Popolizio), of a military family whose large house has a monarcho-fascist sancta sanctorum and is full of taxidermied animals. His sensitive book-hound son Emiliano (Lorenzo Urso) is Giuliano’s best friend, but Sebastiano forbids him from associating with the Arca family.
By now Mereu’s demarcations are fairly apparent: people at one with nature versus those who kill, and sensitivity versus cruelty. (Audiences could logically expect another contrast between the working and upper classes, but as we’ll see, fairy tales need their princesses.) When Piero brings Giuliano to a forest called “The Children” (“I Bambini”), we’re bracing ourselves for a magical realism moment.
But no, not quite yet. Time jumps ahead and we meet Edoardo Branca (Alberto Cracco), a bookish old man who wears nice cardigans and smiles a lot in his aristocratic palazzo. His daughter Maddalena (Giulia Maenza) is our princess; she may not have a title, but she has the house and more importantly, she has a beauty and grace that could have come straight out of a storybook. Her boyfriend is nasty Sebastiano’s older soldier son Michelangelo (Lorenzo Richelmy), a true chip off the old block. She’s spontaneous and playful, he’s rigid and rulebound. For Emiliano, tormentedly poetic, it’s not easy having such a brother. Or father, for that matter, especially after Sebastiano repeatedly slams his son’s head against a sink.
Then one day, Giuliano (now played by an excellent Romeo Perrone) comes home to discover all the animals massacred and his father gone. Setting out to search for him, Giuliano heads to “The Children,” only this time the children appear, ragtag forest dwellers who first tell him to leave but then, like a multitude of junior Calypsos, don’t want him to go. While all this is happening, Mereu’s also keeping track of Maddalena and Michelangelo, until the inevitable moment when the princess meets the woodsman and the spell can be broken.
While it’s a given that fairy tales have a built-in element of predictability, “Wandering Trees” wants to have it both ways: far too many elements are screamingly obvious, like the stuffed buzzards in the Nonne house, and of course young Giuliano studies Giacomo Leopardi’s poem “The Infinite” (“L’Infinito”), the most recognizable paean to nature in all of Italian literature. Poor Emiliano’s character cries out for development, while Maddalena’s two sisters seem tossed in simply because storybook princesses always have sisters, don’t they?
Perhaps the fault lies in Alberto Capitta’s novel (he also co-wrote the script), but the point of adaptations is to make them work on screen. Mereu’s sure hand with his actors is a saving grace, with Perrone and Maenza particularly well-cast, and DP Francesco Piras lights them to perfection while being in perfect synch with the director’s reverence for the natural world. The problem isn’t the wandering trees, but the wandering narrative, which needs deeper roots.
