The Tree is a 1993 short film that Todd Field created while a fellow at the AFI Conservatory.
It is a non-verbal dramatic piece following the life of a boy born at the turn of the century.
The single setting, an apple tree set high on a rural ridge, is where we glimpse the boy mature, fall in love, go to war, return with his own son, and finally pay his last respects as a very old man who has seen much change.
The set was designed using the tree as a scale foreground visual anchor and employing forced perspective for other items appearing in frame, including distant mountains, a train, and a town in transition.
The film is loosely based upon and inspired by the story The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.