Customer Reviews

Treeless Mountain

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A young girl, barely 7 years old, is left to fend for her little sister when their mother leaves them both in the hands of a distracted and insensitive aunt. Promised by their mother that if they were good their aunt would give them coins and that she would come back when their piggy bank was full, the children improvise ways to earn small change and fill up the bank, hoping to hasten their mother's return.

So Yong Kim's follow up to the wonderful and understated In Between Days is a revelation of a film. Shot in a style that captures simple nuances of childhood without artifice, the film is also a formal masterpiece. Every shot is framed with care and precision, captures subtleties of gesture and emotion that feel utterly authentic, or captures settings and light and other natural elements to give a haiku-like accent to the mood of surrounding scenes. To say that this film is shot documentary-style is technically true, but may give the false impression of a amateur home-movie style video or shaky cameras and this film is nothing like that. In its formal precision that captures the essence of the reality it depicts rather than the raw subject matter the film is closer to work by the Dardenne Brothers or to that of Robert Bresson, than to the more ad hoc and improvised "documentary-style" cinematography of the Office television series or of something like Cloverfield or even District 9.

A delicate and lovely film about the fragility and resilience of childhood. Highly recommended.

I'm surprised I don't find more discussions about this movie. Why, because it is one of the best family movies I've seen and it portrays one of the saddest issues - that is the effect of adoption, divorce, foster care - all the estrangements that can occur between children and guardians.
What makes this movie different are the brilliant actors and the classy filming and editing. Never mind the sub-titles the movie just visually tells a story, some of the best scenes come from the subtle smiles and natural movements that only a child could render.
Fortunately this DVD comes with extras, whether through deleted scenes or interviews with the two leads that add comedy and poignancy to the film.
Amazingly two actors age five and seven are able to deliver a striking performance.

Treeless Mountain was utterly charming, a far more upbeat take on a situation somewhat similar to Hirokazu Koreeda's tragic "Nobody Knows" ("Dare mo shiranai", 2004). A 30ish big-city single mom in dire financial straits drops off her seven and five-year-old daughters with the 50ish 'Big Aunt', her sister-in-law, a functioning alcoholic in a small town, who a few weeks later in turn dumps them on their 70ish maternal grandparents, who live on a rather primitive farm.

Mom has given the girls a piggy bank, and said she'd return by the time they've filled it, a white lie, of course, but the kids start collecting impaling and charbroiling grasshoppers (yum -- healthful animal protein) to sell to big aunt's neighbors at ten cents a pop. Then they discover that ten pennies take up more bank space than a dime, and engage in some currency conversion. Even though the piggy's now full, mom doesn't show up. Later, at the farm, the girls offer grandma the bank to buy herself new winter shoes.

It's not all sunshine. The girls have their quirks. Jin, the older daughter, has a bed-wetting problem, and frames little sister Bin, who gets revenge later. There are lots of little touches like that in all the characters, but it's all understated, and much is implied without being obvious. The overall impression is of a society that values its kids highly, and the extended family structure makes what might otherwise have been a tragic situation bearable and even light-hearted at times. On the commentary track, the director reveals she's dedicated the film to her own grandmother, the movie having been somewhat autobiographical.

I saw this movie two days ago and I'm still thinking about it. Amazing performances by two child non-actors. Their mother (single, tired and struggling) leaves them with their neglectful aunt while going in search of their father... or was that just an excuse to abandon the children she is unable to raise on her own?

The mother leaves the girls with a piggy bank, promising to return when the girls have filled it completely. The girls show maturity beyond their years, finding creative ways to fill their piggy bank while also displaying the innocence and hopefulness of a child while waiting for their mother to return. Their faces and expressions are haunting and heart tugging. As hard as it was to watch them struggle with their aunt, it was satisfying to see them receive more attention and love from their elderly grandmother.

I would love a sequel with a happy ending. Wishful thinking?

In response to a reviewer who gave this movie 1 start and called it boring, well, anyone who needs special effects, car chases and other "action" may find this movie "boring". However, I think anyone with a heart, compassion and sensitivity will love this movie.

As a side note: the young girl who played the younger sister in this movie was discovered in a foster home. Knowing this while I was watching this movie really tugged at my heartstrings. I saw a wisdom, playfulness and strength in her that was humbling. Does anyone know what happened to her after this movie was filmed?

This got a mini release at our theater here, I was the only one in the theater, so beautiful and sad. I went back to see it again the next night! It really sticks with you.

It feels as if the movie was set way before the present time, what with the lack of schooling allowed by the various caretakers. I enjoyed the quiet telling of the subtler crimes committed against children in the care of anyone other than their parents. The failure to feed on time, forced laundry, the rejection by any non-disabled friend's mother. Even the down syndrome boy's mom never asked the girls if they had any way of getting back inside their aunt's house. No one noticed they were eating grasshoppers (how is this possible?).. but the director keeps making rewarding cinematic pieces using 'blank canvases'. The grandchildren-halmuni interaction reminded me of ''', another wonderful movie.

Very interesting movie putting light on problems facing modern South Koreans on raising a family.

Actors very natural.

Although I've often raved to friends about this film, I don't often recommend that they rush out and watch it. It's slow and elegiac and lacks the kind of italics that American audiences are used to. There's no music or sweeping camerawork to suggest how we're supposed to feel about anything. And though its dramatic structure is earnest, it's also nearly invisible.

And yet, still, to me . . . it's an astonishing and beautiful movie, mostly because of the performances of the two little girls, who are captured on camera--not "acting"--but merely behaving.

Maybe, if you understand all that, you'll like this movie too.

I'll also add this: a few weeks after seeing it, I also saw Jim Cameron's AVATAR in a theatre. It was admittedly spectacular. And yet, three days later, I found myself not caring about anything or anyone on the planet Pandora. Instead, I was still worrying about those two little girls in Korea . . . .

One of the few Korean words I know is Halmoni, from a story I read with third graders when I taught it. (totally off topic I am transferring back to 3rd, looking forward to the story once again)
Interestingly I learned a few more Korean words from this film I caught today on Sundance.
Bin and Jin are very like two children that I might be teaching, caught in financial collapse as their mother drops them on her sister, Big Aunt, an alcoholic who goes on and fails them as well. Mom is caught in a deceit telling them she'll be back when they fill a small piggy bank. The film really introduces us into this time of crisis for these kids. They are so darling- they do amazingly filling their bank to try to get Mom home through utter ingenuity. Coin exchanging, as well as solid entrepreneurial creativity. But in doing so, they learn she is "a liar." (Things trigger memories, this reminded me of one of my own-a promise unkept about the taking of a family to San Diego for a vacation for which I saved for years-but a divorce was really what I got when the bank had the amount I was required to save from money I never used for shoes and clothing.) In the movies near end in a key scene the older sister takes the bank to her grandmother as she has realized her grandmother has awful shoes, after asking her for winter shoes for them both-and then understanding Halmoni has terrible shoes. I saw this as the child gaining empathy capacity. And in that moment I felt the film suggested that from our struggles comes our capacity to see and care for others-the real genius in the work.....Along the way in quiet scenes we glimpse the world from the child's space. It is poetic. Just scenes like a long shot on a cloud are embedded with implication, feeling. Big Aunt takes them to their grandparents who live in a very rural, simplistic, yet oddly comforting and real way. I found that the happy ending actually, that they found a way to family, support, care.

I started to think about why I kept watching. The children were beautiful. They played like children play, they related like children relate. The wordlessness and the feelings of children in events such as this was conveyed. I teach 6 year olds. One child had a crisis, he took a lollipop from another. But in unwinding this this child one of 5 siblings in a broken family in troubled times, with different absent fathers told his mother to call me that afternoon and she did. Slowly and in such a puzzle piece kind of way of communication I learned she was a week in a hospital, still there, about to lose her baby, with 107 fever, had been iced, so on. He was dealing with all of this in a wordless vacuum. All I saw was a stolen pop and a boy that looked unfeeling. But surely is not. He's actually deeply wanting to do well. Understand, communicate his meanings. I think the movie conveys something of this child-iverse a place where things just happen, and you are wrapped in the realities in the moment. And aren't able to formulate a verbal narrative. In this way, how it was shot, the piece is brilliant.

It's a very moving film but it ends in a way that left me feeling I'd still like to go along with the girls watching time pass.Teach them a song or two, be their teacher. I know we would enjoy our time together.

This is a very professionally directed movie. It doesn't feel like an Indie Film at all so I was surprised that the director had also made In Between Days. Surprisingly, this film held my attention immediately then it got unbearable as everything children need was denied the two main characters. They are not starving like children in Africa, they are not in the middle of a massacre but they are systematically being pushed further and further outside the circle of happiness. Mindless couplings, mindless childrearing and these children get left behind.