Bob Tarasuk is outstanding in the middle-aged actor's first feature film leading role as a beleaguered logger in "Bob and the Trees". Tarasuk's achingly authentic portrayal of a man teetering on the brink of complete surrender to a life of poverty and despair is as uncompromising as it is captivating.First-time full-length film director and co-writer Diego Ongaro (he's helmed several shorts, including one upon which this project is based) brings an inherent and intimate understanding to the simple yet often desolate life of those who live and work far from, and outside of, practically any devices of gentrification. And they would have it no other way.As Bob's character is gradually and deliberately revealed to us we see that this is a man who by all indications invests more attention and affection into his livestock than he does his own wife, Polly (Polly MacIntyre in yet another remarkable performance which strikes nary a false note). We discover that Polly is in the process of pursuing a kind of independence in this marriage by establishing her own identity apart from the auspices of her spouse, engaging in elliptical training and reading self-help books. Bob scarcely seems to recognize this burgeoning transformation in his partner. Nor does he appear to actually even care.There is a scene (courtesy of the spectacular cinematography teamwork of Chris Teague and Daniel Vecchione) toward the end of this movie where we are looking at a tree from the perspective of it's base, gazing straight up through the winter ravaged branches to a bone-chilling sky. It's as if the tree is taunting. Menacing. Reminding Bob and anyone else who depends on it's fruits for their very survival that IT is in control here. Always has been. Always will be. It is a quiet, almost meditative, moment. And yet it is one that speaks volumes about the world in which year after punishingly exhausting year Bob has been engulfed. And from which he so long ago resigned himself to the harsh truth that there is no real hope of escape.And so, as the closing gangsta rap-fueled images of "Bob and the Trees" serve to poignantly reinforce, this man in the wilderness will fight on.He must ALWAYS fight on.

OK, what makes this movie special is that basically you have a bunch of working class people playing themselves and trying to re-create for the camera some events they lived through in real life not so long ago. Those people and those events are by no means very special. An old logger and his son work on a new cutting plot...but what the son doesn't know is that the father (Bob) has taken financial risks he can't really afford. So we see over 1.5 hrs how Bob's life and state of mind slowly falls to pieces (although we sort of know the ending can't be too tragic, because after all he and his son are here, playing themselves in this movie).This movie yet again proves that everybody can play at least one role: themselves. The question is how to make it worth watching. "Bob and the Trees" might not be very memorable or enrapturing but it is one of the rare movies which is refreshingly honest due to being so close to real life.Apparently it won the top prize in Karlovy Vary film festival which is kind of a big deal in Europe.