Matthew McConaughey is doing all right, all right, all right, with an Oscar nomination for Dallas Buyers Club, a surefire Emmy contender in True Detective, and a lead role in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming space-corn summer tentpole Interstellar. Now The Wrap reports he’ll continue that hot streak by starring opposite Ken Watanabe in Gus Van Sant’s Sea Of Trees, an appropriately deep film title for an actor who's swimming in contemplative performances of late.
Sea Of Trees is based on the 2013 Black List script from Buried writer Chris Sparling, and centers on an American (McConaughey) who travels to the “Suicide Forest” around Mount Fuji as a final act before killing himself. There, he meets Watanabe's character, "a Japanese man who has had second thoughts about his own suicide,” and the two men then try to find their way out of the forest. For a director whose best work has focused on close observations of characters stranded in physical loneliness or emotional despair, and an actor who can currently do no wrong, Sea Of Trees looks like a strong match.