A man is measured by his enemies.
How Harry Became a Tree is a 2001 drama film, set in Ireland but made by a Serbian director and originally released in Yugoslavia, about a depressed widower, Harry Maloney, deciding to make the local pub owner and matchmaker, George O'Flaherty, his enemy. He has absolutely no reason to do this and doesn't even personally dislike him, he just believes that "a man is measured by his enemies". When Harry's son, Gus, falls in love with one of George's employees, Eileen, he decides to use their romance to "destroy" George.
It starred Colm Meaney as Harry, Cillian Murphy as Gus, Kerry Condon as Eileen, and Adrian Dunbar as George. It's also pretty tricky to find; few if any DVD copies exist, and streaming services don't appear to have picked up the films' rights either.
How Harry Became a Tree contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Harry constantly berates Gus, occasionally hits him, and happily puts him in danger to serve his own ends. When Gus is bitten in the leg by a dog and permanently crippled, Harry makes fun of him for crying and doesn't offer help, but later uses the injury as a ploy to gain sympathy for himself.
- Ambiguous Disorder: Harry and Gus.
- Harry talks to his dead wife (mostly to complain), has bizarre, tree-related delusions of grandeur, and chooses a random guy he doesn't really know as an enemy. He also beats the shit out of himself to frame George and has no problem encouraging Eileen to kill herself.
- Gus is called slow by other characters and is apparently unable to function on his own. He can hardly talk to strangers, is terrified of dogs, and cries when his wife tries to seduce him, to the point where she has to hold him and rock back and forth to calm him down. Basically, it's implied that he has some kind of intellectual disability, but since the film is set in rural Ireland in 1924, nothing is made clear.
- Arranged Marriage: Gus and Eileen- he wanted to marry her, but it was arranged by Harry and George without much input from either of them. His attraction to her is also initially a childish crush more than anything else, as he says he wants to marry her the first time they meet and is later afraid to have sex with her.
- Beware of Vicious Dog: George has an aggressive barking dog that Gus is terrified of, and it turns out he was right to be scared, because the dog bites and cripples him later in the movie.
- Bittersweet Ending: Gus and Eileen run away together (and finally have sex) and will hopefully have a better life, but George is dead, leaving behind an infant son and widow, Harry is alone in a roofless house, and Gus is permanently crippled.
- Brainless Beauty: Harry proudly says that Gus is the "best-looking lad in town", which is definitely true, but so is George's immediate retort that he's "not the brightest candle on the Christmas tree". Eileen seems to like him anyway, probably because he's very sweet, but she also has an affair of dubious consent with George since Gus is too scared to sleep with her.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Harry. He rambles on about his tree dreams to his clearly uninterested and confused son and chooses a random man as his enemy. When George dies, Harry attends his funeral and tells him to open his eyes, then says George will never escape him.
- Extreme Doormat: Gus accepts his father's abuse without a word, and later does whatever Eileen tells him and doesn't say anything when he finds out she cheated on him. When she tells him to run away, he asks where they're going but meekly follows her anyway.
- Gone Horribly Right: Harry chooses George as his enemy because he's one of the most powerful men in town, but he's so openly antagonistic that George starts to reciprocate his hatred, and eventually steals his roof.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Harry's plan to "destroy" George by having Eileen and Gus marry doesn't exactly work out. Ultimately, his son leaves permanently and he loses his house (well, his roof).
- Grew a Spine: When Harry tries to force an unwilling Eileen to tell the town council that George raped her, Gus notices how uncomfortable she is and tells his father that she doesn't have to say anything she doesn't want to before pulling her outside. He also runs away with Eileen, although it was entirely her idea.
- Henpecked Husband: Gus does whatever Eileen tells him to do and doesn't confront her about sleeping with another man, presumably because he's been abused his entire life and just wants to keep the peace.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He was only thinking about his own goals, but Harry's insistence that George raped Eileen makes more sense when you remember that she's his maid and several years, if not decades, younger than him.
- Manipulative Bastard: Harry isn't as smart as he thinks he is, but he manages to convince George that marrying Gus and Eileen would be beneficial for everyone involved, Eileen to tell the town George raped her, and Gus to shoot George, but that last one doesn't work out.
- Pretty Boy: Gus, played by a young Cillian Murphy. Several reviews took note of how beautiful he is.
- Questionable Consent: Eileen has sex with George, and seems to enjoy it, but Harry insists he "forced her", and there is certainly a power imbalance between them. However, she runs to George when she's scared of Harry. Eileen and Gus also sleep together at the end of the film; today his implicit intellectual disability would make him unable to legally consent.
- The Unintelligible: Everyone, if you're not Irish. Their accents are extremely thick and the background noise and music make it even harder to understand them.
