Documentary 'Red Trees' takes an unusually artsy approach to Holocaust story

By Gary Goldstein

Sept. 14, 2017 1:40 PM PT

It’s fair to say you’ve never seen a Holocaust-related documentary like “Red Trees,” which is not necessarily a plus.

Director Marina Willer (who co-wrote with Brian Eley and Leena Telén) eschews the usual archival clips of marauding Nazis and concentration camp horrors to recount the story of her Czech-born father, architect Alfred Willer, whose family was one of just 12 Jewish households to survive the German occupation of Prague.

She opts for an artistically woven series of gorgeously shot images (cinematographer César Charlone was Oscar-nominated for 2002’s “City of God”), some of which, captured in and around Prague, are specific to Alfred Willer’s childhood, while others are more impressionistic. Shooting also took place in London and in Brazil, where Willer made his postwar home.

Cinematically and emotionally it’s a mixed bag, a slow-moving visual treatise and occasional vanity piece that requires — but doesn’t always earn — our indulgence.

Voice-over duties, shared mostly by the filmmaker and the late actor Tim Pigott-Smith, prove an uneasy mix. Pigott-Smith’s British accent feels a bit incongruous, especially since Alfred Willer, seen here in footage shot largely in 2015, mainly speaks Portuguese.

As for the title, it relates to Alfred Willer’s color blindness, which, among other things, made him see green leaves as red. More broadly, it serves as a metaphor for acceptance of the “different.”

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