{"id":8641,"date":"2021-07-19T09:05:25","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T13:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=8641"},"modified":"2021-07-19T09:07:15","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T13:07:15","slug":"review-the-hidden-life-of-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=8641","title":{"rendered":"Review: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When German forester Peter Wohlleben\u2019s book \u201cThe Hidden Life of Trees\u201d was translated and published in English a couple of years ago, it became an instant American bestseller.\u00a0 The U.S. had just elected a president for whom wildlife preservation was anathema: \u00a0his plans to ravage our national parks seemed to be put into practice with alarming speed. \u00a0

I remember picking up the book and marveling at amazing facts already on the first page: apparently, one of the oldest trees on earth is a Swedish spruce!\u00a0 It\u2019s almost 10,000 years old! Still living! \u00a0How come I, a born and bred Swede, never heard of this magical tree? Was there a sequoia-like mastodon hidden somewhere in the secretive North?

Mr. Wohlleben\u2019s wonders \u2013 he subtitled his book \u201cdiscoveries from a secret world\u201d – seemed almost fantastical to a layperson.\u00a0 He wrote that trees make a communal decision whether or not to bloom a certain year; that the roots function as a tree\u2019s brain; and that mature trees nourish \u201cbabies\u201d as well as \u201cdead\u201d, moss-covered stumps.

As portions of Peter Wohlleben\u2019s fact-laden book has been turned into a fascinating documentary by German director J\u00f6rg Adolf, many of the author\u2019s forest wonders make sense. \u00a0Also titled \u201cThe Hidden Life of Trees\u201d, the film uses time-lapse photography to document how seedlings grow, ferns unfurl, and wood anemones form a white carpet under still-nude beeches. Wild boars root among acorns and beechnuts, the spruce bark beetle does its damage. \u00a0Cinematographer Jan Haft follows Wohlleben on his talking tours, his treks in European forests, his lectures in situ to foreign students.\u00a0

And yes, Peter Wohlleben goes to Sweden and pays homage to the ancient spruce. It\u2019s a shrub-like growth in a popular National Park.\u00a0 Its ancientness lies in the root system \u2013 which has been carbon-dated, and really is more than 9,550 years old.\u00a0

Proper forest maintenance is Wohlleben\u2019s major concern. Today, he manages a forest where machines are banned.\u00a0 If trees need to be harvested, they are dragged out of their growing spots by sturdy work horses. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The movie shows the forever-damage a professional harvester causes: it compacts the soil to hard that the trampled soil can only absorb 10% of the water it used to \u201cdrink\u201d. \u00a0

And pure disdain is what our hero forester has for city planners who think asphalt and concrete can be cheered up with a handful of tree saplings.

\u201cStreet kids\u201d he calls those doomed plants.\u00a0 They seldom go beyond the sapling stage, and they will never replace the mighty oaks, maples, and other tall trees that were felled to make room for the bane of modern inner cities: current heat island caused by condos, offices and parking lots.

The enemies of the street kids are all urban: the heat-inducing microclimate causes dry air, already filled with exhaust fumes.\u00a0 Dogs pee on these \u201ckids\u201d and worse. The bark is damaged and the rootball, already reduced in the nursery, can\u2019t spread without damaging what is buried beneath. \u201cThe Hidden Life of Trees\u201d is a lecture in \u201cWaldpflege\u201d (forest maintenance), as well as a biology class, and a dream of the natural forests we all deserve to return to.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bestselling German tome gets big screen adaptation. Mercy gives us her thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1754,206],"class_list":["post-8641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-documentary","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8646,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641\/revisions\/8646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}