The Olive Tree

Alma is what you call a wild girl. She has partly shaved her hair in a decorative pattern, sleeps with boys she hardly knows and throws eggs at the cars of people she doesn't like. But she has one weak spot: her grandpa. Not only is she extremely fond of him, she also sympathizes with his silent protest against the sale of the oldest tree in the family's olive grove. Since the tree was sold, he refuses to speak and marks the spot where the tree stood with little stones.

Alma, sensing that her grandfather's death is coming near, starts a search for the sold tree. Through the company who organized the sale she discovers that the tree is now standing in the lobby of a big energy company in Germany. In a whim, she convinces her uncle and a friend to retrieve the tree, in order to let her grandpa die in peace.

The film has a nice plot, but is also a clear warning against the excesses of capitalism. The central theme is that there are things that cannot be expressed in monetary value. When Alma's grandfather is told that the tree is useless because nobody buys expensive olive oil anymore, he answers that the tree doesn't belong to him, 'it belongs to history'.

On a second level, the film shows Spain after the financial crisis. Alma's uncle is a ruined man, who has used the proceeds of the tree to bribe the local mayor, in order to get a permit for a seafront restaurant that has since gone bankrupt. The film starts with a practical joke: Alma calls her uncle, pretending to be a bank employee collecting the outstanding debt. That's a nice joke, but with a clear message.

The screenplay for the film was written by Paul Laverty, a writer with a keen sense for social justice who has written several social dramas for Ken Loach. In some of these, the emphasis was too much on the social aspect, but in El Olivo the mix between the character interaction, the social comment and the human emotion is just right. Talking about human emotion: anyone who is not touched by the last scenes, has a heart of stone.