By Dennis Hartley

For two and a half hours, the lead character in Ildikó Enyedi’s multi-generational drama doesn’t utter a single word, nor move an inch. Yet, our star suggests a rich “inner life”, simply by…being. Alright, it’s a tree.

More specifically, it’s a huge ginkgo tree, housed on the campus of a venerable German university in Marburg. The ginkgo remains the constant in a triptych of narratives set at the school over a period spanning 100-plus years: the travails of a young woman at the turn of the 20th Century who is the university’s first female science grad, a shy young man who pines for a fellow student in the early 1970s, and a visiting professor from China who gets stranded on campus during the early days of the COVID pandemic.

Enyedi ties his disparate story threads together in much the same manner one nurtures a plant; he patiently observes, knows when to illuminate a plot point, and is careful not to over-water grace notes. The tree, in the meantime, says nothing; but ultimately, it stands for everything. That’s the beauty of this film.