Directed by Jörg Adolph
Written by Jörg Adolph based on The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Featuring Peter Wohlleben
MPAA rating: PG for Intense Time Lapse Photography of Plant Growth
Running time: 1 hour and 24 minutes
Opens in theaters July 16

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

In his book The Hidden Life of Trees, German forester and conservationist Peter Wohlleben set out to answer the age-old question of: If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Ok, it’s a little more complex than that, but the subtitle of the book is What They Feel, How They Communicate so you know you’re in for some surprisingly heavy and thoughtful tree content. If you’re like me, you look at a tree and you’re like, “Yep, that’s a tree.” Maybe you’re in the mountains and see a cool stand of Aspen trees and someone in your hiking party says, “Did you know that all of those Aspens are genetically identical and grow from the same root structure?” and you’re like, “Cool!” (true story from my most recent trip to the Rocky Mountains). I took up woodworking as a pandemic coping mechanism so I think about dead trees a lot, but the ecology of trees is something that is just as alien to me as the weird undiscovered world at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. Thus, I was more than happy to spend an hour and a half listening to a tree wizard go off about how freaking amazing trees are. 

Making a film about trees is only a slightly bigger task than making a film about dirt or air: Something we encounter every day (well, hopefully) and something that we take for granted. To director Jörg Adolph’s credit, this particular tree movie is never dull. The photography is picturesque and you spend most of the time hanging out in forests learning neat tree facts. Adolph’s adaptation of Wohllenben’s book is tight and flows easily from one topic to the next. The film never lags and always feels like it spends just the right amount of time on each facet. It also certainly helps that Peter Wohlleben is there every step of the way with his infectious enthusiasm about the many wonders of trees. He drops tree knowledge in such a way that his excitement about, say, the way fungal networks on the forest floor connect stands of trees like a network of fiber optic cables that helps the trees stay connected about when to hibernate, what insects are eating their leaves, etc, becomes your excitement. 

There are so many awesome tree facts in this baby that I feel like dropping any more of them here would almost constitute a spoiler. Ok maybe a teaser, did you know that tree roots can sense the sound waves of water (200 hz) and move toward them? The movie has time-lapse footage of this and it’s AWESOME. The movie has a lot of time lapse footage, actually, which is pretty much a must for any nature doc but for this one it is particularly effective. It’s also stunningly beautiful watching a little beechnut on the forest floor explode into a little baby tree. 

This is one of those movies science teachers should roll out on the regular. It’s just such an elegant and engaging package of learning. Yeah sure the stoner kids in the back might not give a crap, but The Hidden Life of Trees has the power to draw in any remotely curious person. One thing this film does extraordinarily well is that it layers in the existential dread of climate change on ecological systems in such a way that you never get that doomed feeling that, let’s face of it, most of us feel on a pretty much regular basis because we live in a world that is content to let the world burn to appease a handful of billionaires who will never stop exploiting the Earth until it has been completely stripped to the bone and maximum value has been obtained for them and their shareholders. You see! That death spiral of dread is ever-present, and Adolph and Wollhenben do an incredible job of making it a foundational part of this story without making it the most important part. The most important thing this film can do is to get you to look at the trees in your yard differently. It shows you that there is a whole world that you do not see, that has developed over millions of years, and is worth keeping around (and not just because trees help to provide that oxygen stuff we need to live).