To me, this movie is perfection.

Load of rubbish!!

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Honestly I could not remember the name of this film, yet I have been recommending it to many people over the years. Knowing over these years that it received the Oscar I was confident people would be able to find it once they knew the simple beauty of the story and the passion of this profoundly touched film lover. Funny.... I always started telling about this film with.... its about this one guy who plants trees while he is goes about his life as a Shepard in the hills..... What a beautiful testament to human spirit and the blessings of nature.

This short film is 30 minutes long and it is pretty deceptive in how it works because on the face of it the story is very simple, a little bit "pat" in the message and also quite long compared to the average length for short film animations. I say it is deceptive because in every way it appears it manages to be the opposite. So it looks like it should feel long, but yet it moves quite quickly as it tells the story. Likewise it appears that the story being so simple and delivered in a patience even tone means that it will be dull or eel like it is moving too slowly but yet the opposite is the case as the story draws you in, engaging you and taking you with it.The dialogue does this by having lots of personal detail and phrasing that means it never sounds like a dry description so much as it does the actual memories of an actual person. It is simple to describe this difference but hard to pull off and the film does it well. The nature of the telling is also very important and credit to whomever cast Plummer because his rich warm voice fits the dialogue like a glove, softly drawing us in with a gentle approach. The animation completes the film and indeed operates like the whole by virtue of appearing simple but yet being more than it appears at first glance. We are used to very detailed CGI etc when we watch animated film now, so the more traditional style here doesn't impress in an instance, but overall it is really well done with great colors, nice movement of the viewer's eye over landscapes and some beautiful images.I was not greatly moved by the film but I was touched by it in an affectionate and gentle fashion. No one part of it will knock your socks off, but as a whole package the film works very well as a story, gently and effectively told.

"L'homme qui plantait des arbres" (1988) is incomparable for many reasons: the humanity, bittersweet warmth, the craft. But above all it creates a sort of dream language with its own logic of transition and movement, so much so that few other films have transported me so completely to a world I never knew existed or could exist. I don't ask for much more when it comes to film.The film works beautifully with Marker's "La Jetée" (1962). Both films are strong metaphors for film in how they represent our own quest as viewers for images that become much like memory to us. Marker's film works so beautifully because there the story unfolds unto itself through still images, photographs. This film, however, swerves the other way, and the images themselves are fleeting, unsure, ebbing and flowing in and out of focus – and existence. It's the exemplary of the dance of shadow and light.I'd love to see this completely silent.

Animation changed greatly after the major studios (Warner Brothers, Disney, MGM, etc.) stopped producing their own animated works. This 30 minute short is one of the best of the period since the major studios regularly produced animated shorts based on cels.This 30 minute, Oscar-winning production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is an animated portrayal of a French "Johnny Appleseed", who did his work among the turmoil of World War I. Both men, Johnny Appleseed and Elzear Bouffier, the subject of this film, were real men who appreciated the importance of trees on the land. This film is not widely available. Videotapes can be ordered from Direct Cinema in Harriman, New York.