Review: Trees have much to tell us in the thoughtful eco-forward drama 'Silent Friend'

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It’s not merely trendy psychologizing to salute the qualities of a sturdy tree: a humbling reminder of time’s immensity, but also a living embodiment of shelter, change and growth.Leave it, then, to a massive gingko on the grounds of a medieval German town’s college to cosmically center the three-pronged, multi-generational character study “Silent Friend” from Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi.Enyedi, from her mesmeric, calling-card period lark “My Twentieth Century” to the eccentric love story “On Body and Soul,” has always been preoccupied with that realm in which the everyday meets the all-seeing and possibility is awakened.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she’d give a starring role to a 200-year-old tree, which just may inspire the needed answers.And why not? Our living, “breathing,” sky-reaching neighbors have considerable communication skills with each other.Our entryway is a modern day neuroscientist played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai (and called Tony), who arrives at the University of Marburg as a visiting professor ready to further his groundbreaking research into the mysteries of infant brain development.

The gig becomes a lonely endeavor, however, when the pandemic hits and he’s confined to a depopulated campus, sent unwillingly into a kind of monkhood.Movies If you want big popcorn fare from the best directors in the blockbuster game (Spielberg, Nolan, Ridley Scott), it’s here, along with a number of promising indie swings.It’s as if the nearby natural world, photographed by Gergely Pálos and edited by Károly Szalai, was just waiting for such a solitary moment to draw Tony’s undivided attention into the prospect of green intelligence.In tandem, Enyedi transports us to 1908 to meet aspiring botanist Grete (Luna Wedler), the university’s first female student, subjected to cruelly patronizing treatment by smug male elders, yet dri...