Reviewed by Jason Goodyer
Stars Hee-yeon Kim, Song-hee Kim, Mi-hyang Kim, Soo-ah Lee, Park Boon Tak, Lee Byung Yong, Lee Hyun Seo, Ha Min Woo, Lee Kang Won, Kim Mi Jung
Written by So Yong Kim
Certification UK PG
Runtime 89 minutes
Directed by So Yong Kim
The humanitarian worker and Catholic nun Mother Teresa once stated: “When we learn to see life through the eyes of a child, that is when we become truly wise." Anyone subscribing to this theory would be well advised to check out So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain – a film that captures the viewpoint of its pint-sized protagonists so expertly it practically demands you look at the world from a new perspective, if only for the 89 minutes it runs.
Seven-year-old Jin (Hee-yeon Kim) and little sister Bin (Song-hee Kim) are given an early introduction to the hardship and uncertainties of adult life when their poverty-stricken mother (Soo-ah Lee) leaves them in the hands of their Big Aunt (Mi Hyang Kim) after heading off to track down their absent father. The girls are understandably upset but handing them a plastic piggy bank she assures them she will be back by the time it is full. Big Aunt turns out to be a sour-faced drunk who, having little time for the girls, leaves them to their own devices. With no school to go to they while away the hours rummaging around on a patch of wasteland or visiting a kindly neighbour who gives them snacks and lets them play with her son’s toys. Focussed on getting their mother back the girls also set about capturing grasshoppers to sell to the local kids and see a short cut to filling the piggy bank by changing larger coins for smaller ones at a local shop. But when the piggy is full and there’s still no sign of mum Big Aunt unceremoniously ships the girls off to their poor grandparents’ farm where their grandmother’s (Park Boon Tak) kindness finally helps them come to terms with their situation.
Kim says the initial idea for the film came from her own childhood experiences when her mother divorced her father and emigrated to the US leaving her alone at her grandparents’ rice farm. Though the director claims she used her memories of this time as little more than a starting point it is the finely observed details, no doubt gleaned from these early experiences, that breathe life into the film and imbue Jin and Bin with a heartbreaking blend of anxiousness, fear and hope as they struggle against the circumstances thrust upon them. Both nonprofessionals cast following visits to schools and orphanages in Seoul and not real life sisters, Hee-yeon and Song-hee’s performances are quiet and naturalistic and completely devoid of the bratty overconfidence or forced mannerisms commonly seen in trained child actors. Kim often keeps her camera down at their eyelevel and alternates frame-filling close-ups of facial expressions with elegant, meditative wide angle shots of scenery and skylines echoing the helplessness felt by the sisters as they drift uncontrollably into the wide, unknown world. Whether cinemagoers will leave the theatre any wiser is open to debate but as a tender, emotional portrait of the paradoxical fragility and resilience of children the film is very hard to fault.