I admired director Katharina Rabl’s “Memories of a Forest” far more than I actually liked it. The film is gorgeous to look at thanks largely to cinematographer Jacob Kohl, who shoots the Austrian woodland in soft, grainy natural light. The images (like sunlight filtering through spruce branches or sawdust drifting through the air) have the warmth and texture of old family photographs, making the forest feel like a living recording of the past. It’s absolutely beautiful, but the story never quite reaches the emotional depth those images promise.
Frieda (Julia Windischbauer) is a young academic who returns to her rural hometown after her grandmother’s death and unexpectedly inherits 15 hectares of forest. When she discovers that the land is ravaged by bark beetles and may be worth very little, Frieda is caught between her family’s expectations and the independent life she has worked toward in Vienna.
There’s a worthwhile conflict here. The film understands the complicated guilt that can come with leaving home, particularly when independence feels like a rejection of the people and traditions that raised you. I also appreciated that it doesn’t portray the village or Frieda’s family as backward obstacles to her ambitions. The tension is more complicated than that, with class, generational expectations, and very different ideas about what the forest actually means all coming into play.
But the film is so restrained that Rabl keeps it feeling emotionally distant. The family conflicts remain underdeveloped, and several of the film’s larger ideas (like generational trauma, environmental loss, financial pressure, and our relationship to the land) never quite come together. The bark beetle infestation becomes a metaphor for things quietly decaying beneath the surface, but the screenplay doesn’t fully capitalize on it.
While I liked Rabl’s patience and visual restraint (and Kohl’s cinematography is genuinely beautiful), I just kept waiting for the film to dig deeper. “Memories of a Forest” has the look and atmosphere of a powerful family drama, but the emotional payoff never quite arrives.
By: Louisa Moore
