Treeless
Mountain
by
Howard Schumann
A follow up to her remarkable first feature In Between Days
- a coming-of-age story about a Korean immigrant girl’s painful
adolescence - Treeless Mountain loosely reflects
the personal experiences of writer-director So Yong Kim, who grew up
in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. when she was twelve years
old. It is a meticulously observed portrait of two Korean girls, ages
5 and 7, coping with the terrors of having to rely mostly on their own
resources when their mother leaves to search for their estranged father.
Like Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist Wendy
and Lucy, not much happens in the way of plot, but the
film is less about what happens externally than internally - in the
characters’ tentative groping toward maturity.
Kim’s
camera is always close to the girls’ faces, allowing us to see
the world through their eyes. It is still an innocent world, but one
that is becoming more knowing and, unfortunately, more acclimatized
to the lies of adults. When seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her
younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) are left by their mother (Soo Ah Lee)
in the care of an alcoholic aunt (Mi Hyang Kim), she gives them a piggy
bank and tells them that each time they listen to “Big Aunt,”
a coin will be deposited in their bank. When it is filled, she will
return. Big Aunt is cold and cranky and clearly cannot handle the responsibility
of caring for the young girls, but is more annoying than abusive, calling
them a “pain” to be around and berating young Bin for bedwetting.
In one scene,
she gives the girls a bowl and tells them to beg the neighbors for sugar.
In another, she demands money from a neighbor for a minor scratch Bin
suffers when playing with her son. Bin and Jin manage to find friendship,
however, with a little handicapped boy and pass the time by capturing
and roasting grasshoppers to sell on the streets to help fill their
piggy bank. When they discover that they can exchange one large coin
for many small ones, they are one step closer to what they believe will
be their mother’s return. When the bank is filled, the girls wait
for their mother at the bus stop, losing faith with each bus that comes
and goes without their mother. It is a heartbreaking scene that brings
back memories of classic neorealist films of the past.
Optimism and
inner strength surface again, however, when, after receiving a letter
from the girls’ mother, Big Aunt delivers them to their grandparents
farm in the countryside. In their return to nature, they can at last
breathe free and open themselves to the caring they so desperately need.
The young actresses were recruited through the director’s observations
of children at local Korean schools rather than through talent agencies,
and their performances are models of authenticity.
There is never
any sense that they are simply acting or going through the motions.
Treeless Mountain avoids histrionics or crowd pleasing sentimentality.
It is a film about particular children, but one that has universal appeal,
touching everyone who has experienced the fear of abandonment at one
time or another. That means all of us.
©2009 Howard Schumann
CineScene
