A family is a careful and often fragile ecosystem. Some can withstand strong winds, while others crumble under the slightest of breezes. In Babak Khajehpasha’s “In the Arms of the Tree,” a couple who have been together for more than a decade have to grapple with what their decision to divorce will do, not just to their lives but to the well-knit world their two young sons have created for one another. A modest proposal that examines an isolated family in rural Iran, Khajehpasha’s feature nevertheless brims with heartfelt authenticity.
Kimia and Farid (Maral Baniadam and Javad Ghamati) have decided to call it quits. The two already lead quite independent lives, splitting their time between the various businesses they’ve come to own in the years they’ve been married. What still binds them, though, are their two young children: Taha and Alisan (Ahoura Lotfi and Rayan Lotfi). The brothers all but operate as a single unit, with Taha being all too happy to play big brother to young Alisan. They’re the kind of siblings who feel joined at the hip, playing games together in the fields to keep themselves entertained and then napping together in bed, as if beholden to the same needs on any given day.
As Kimia begins to solidify plans to finally separate from Farid, it becomes clear that the two brothers will have to be separated as well. Only neither parent can quite bring themselves to break the news to the boys, who spend their days, instead, being babysat by their uncle Reza (Rouhollah Zamani), a lovelorn young man who may not be the most responsible guy around. He clearly adores the boys, taking cues from their wide-eyed view of the world. Yet he also finds ways to exploit them and earn some cash on the side. That’s what he does one day when he has them recruit other kids to bet money on a decidedly dangerous game: who will stay on the tracks the longest as the train barrels their way toward them?
Like many moments throughout “In the Arms of the Tree,” that particular scene hinges on lurking danger. It’s the sense that something quite terrible may happen if the boys and those around them aren’t careful enough. The divorce, of course, and the separation that is to follow poses its own threat, yet Khajehpasha’s screenplay aims to give it a visceral danger. The fear that Taha and Alisan’s carefully constructed world could crumble, and that their actual lives may be in jeopardy, is what eventually swallows whole the latter section of this film. Tragedy does strike and the fallout sets the stage for Khajehpasha to craft a humanist call toward hope, using the two young brothers as vehicles through which to extoll the value of parents who care and who will do anything in their power to make sure their kids return to them safely.
Shot mostly outdoors — in fish farms and flower fields, in bustling streets and crowded markets, and often around the kind of trees its title gestures toward — Khajehpasha’s feature is awash in nature. Long takes that privilege twinkling sunlight often put us in the innocent headspace of Taha and Alisan. The film imagines a kind of untouched innocence in their way of being in the world. And it’s the disruption of that pleasant ingenuity that jolts the film into a more hurried melodrama, where Kimia’s secret (the root, it seems, of the phobia that’s come between her and Farid) explodes the gentle family drama Khajehpasha is painting.
The gentleness the film captures is perhaps all too mollifying. Not cloying, but clearly designed to be inoffensive: who would, after all, wish these boys, this family, this community, any harm? By stressing the centrality of a family fractured (and perhaps putting it back together), “In the Arms of the Tree” is maudlin to a fault. At the 41st Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran, actor-turned-filmmaker Khajehpasha walked away with awards for best screenplay, best director and best first film — priming this slight family drama to become the country’s submission for this year’s international feature race at the Academy Awards. There’s beauty here and a great eye for grounded performances (not just the kids; Baniadam shines as a mother unraveling by fears she cannot keep at bay), but this Iranian domestic tale offers little more than well-worn platitudes.