The Albino’s Trees (2016) Eiko Ishibashi Scored Killing of a Sacred Deer (Review)

This modest, low budget drama aims high as a Japanese take on Greek tragedy that’s lightly based on the two millennia-old story of Agamemnon’s sacrifice (and also beating Yorgos Lanthimos to the punch by a year). A film by Masakazu Kaneko, who serves as director, writer, producer, editor, and cinematographer, The Albino’s Trees tells the story of animal control hunter Yuku, a man struggling to pay his terminally ill mother’s hospital bills, who’s offered an unusually high paying job to go to an isolated village on the foothills of Mount Hiyori to hunt a single animal – an albino deer. Yuku and his colleague are quick to question the nature of this particularly odd expedition, soon finding out this creature is considered a God by the locals of the village, and all of their many superstitions and traditions are entirely contingent on this White Deer God.

The Albino’s Trees doesn’t mince its words when it comes to this moral conundrum surrounding modern society’s struggle to integrate with nature and rural communities. To kill this deer would be cataclysmic for this village, who prophesise that the day their God dies will be the day their village disappears. Yuku inadvertently becomes involved with various characters in the village, each of whom have their own wisdom and beliefs when it comes to the fate of the deer. There’s the elderly fellow hunter who seems fully aware of the stakes at play, yet is yet strangely comfortable with the consequences; the woman who’s been caught in one of the old hunter’s traps; the young carpenter who affectionately creates bowls and other wares from the valley; and a ghostly encounter Yuku experiences that pushes this film into the realm of spiritual cinema.

This dialectical approach to its mystery could easily be chalked up as a criticism when most of the dialogue involves characters simply speaking so forwardly and at length about the themes of the film, but I found this lulled me into a sense of ease that left me open to the spiritual power of Kaneko’s images. In interviews the director cited Andrei Tarkovsky as an influence, and I saw shades of Stalker in how the character’s straightforward, almost didactic writing does nothing to underplay the stunning images, and in fact enhances the stakes in many ways for our characters. It also helps that Kaneko’s writing is beautifully decorative, and is one of The Albino’s Trees‘ many features that have an understated lyricism to them.

From it’s muted Japanese release in 2016 to only now becoming available internationally, perhaps this film’s greatest legacy is its early score from the great Eiko Ishibashi – which precedes her monumental collaborations with Ryūsuke Hamaguchi that quickly catapulted her status to one of modern cinema’s most important film composers. The Albino’s Trees‘ music is extremely sparse, being entirely non-existent for the first act, and when it does enter it’s subdued and ominous. It’s an unexpectedly different approach when compared to her scores for the likes of Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, which have far more commanding and melodic soundtracks that take centre stage, whereas her music in this film is ambient and indistinct. It feels far more on trend with the way film soundtracks have transitioned to become more discordant and atmospheric, but it’s still a very effective score that props up the drama, and marks an interesting growth in Ishibashi’s work.

Kaneko’s affinity for nature is palpably clear here, and proves to be an effective creative dogma as the film’s movement from the city to the deep forestland is brilliantly visualised. The opening act in the urban environment is flat, almost bland looking, reflecting Yuku’s internal dissatisfaction, but the mountain is always in view, consuming certain vistas of the city. As the film moves into the natural environment of the woods, the visuals almost instinctively dial in and the compositions become more dynamic. Kaneko shows a deft display of craft here, morphing the film’s style and visual language as the stakes slowly grow with Yuku’s complicated moral position. It may be a cliché to say that a “certain place” is a character, but here nature itself takes a starring role as an integral player in this drama.

Comparisons to Evil Does Not Exist are unavoidable, from strangely specific plot details to general themes, and even Ishibashi’s contributions, yet The Albino’s Trees is far more forgiving to its audience compared to that film. Then again, few films in recent memory are as challenging or as probing as Hamaguchi’s dense, perplexing enigma, and Kaneko’s approach to his own personal anxiety surrounding Japan’s urbanisation is a deeply felt moral parable that’s inviting, but haunting in its unfolding.

Jake’s Archive – The Albino’s Trees (2016)