Significant enough to be name-checked in the title, the trees hang over the film, threatening to impose heavy metaphor on what is otherwise a straightforward family saga.

"Simon and the Oaks" branches out in ways unusual and interesting enough to hold your attention and then even shake it a bit.

The sheer sincerity of everyone concerned bolsters the whole enterprise so that Ohlin's historical novel-on-film holds us.

It's simply a good film that could have been so much more.