Treeless Mountain

"Treeless Mountain" is a beautiful and emotionally affecting film. In the film, two young girls are left in the care of an uncaring aunt so that the mother can supposedly go look for her estranged husband. She tells the girls she will return before too long, but it soon becomes clear (through a letter to the aunt) that she simply is unable to care for the children any more. So the aunt, on the advice of the mother, takes the children to their grandparents farm to stay. The children develop a close bond to the kind grandmother and they start to feel comfortable in their surroundings. The two children, who had never acted before, gave incredibly beautiful performances. Six-year-old Hee Yeon Kim played the role of Jin while four-year-old Song Hee Kim played her younger sister Bin. I found it so easy to fall in love with these two beautiful children. They performed with such a naturalness and softness that they seemed like real sisters. The chemistry was so strong between them. And So Young Kim did a remarkable job as writer and director of the film. Her style of direction put all the focus on the two girls and their circumstances. And even though times were sometimes difficult for the girls, there is such a soft and delicate air about the film. I think "Treeless Mountain" is one of the best films about childhood ever made. And it does such a good job of showing the resilience that children have in adapting to difficult situations. I would give this film more than 5 stars if I could; it's really that good. And I would certainly recommend it to anyone.

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.

Two very young children are left to an aunt as the mom says she needs to leave to find the children's father. The aunt, after awhile, can not handle this job any more, and the children are being handed around until they end up with the grandmother, where the children find security and love. I enjoyed watching this true-to-life story very much. It shows how resilient and resourceful little kids can be, and how they thrive when they feel loved.

I sent this video straightaway to my oldest daughter, as I knew she would like it as well as I did. I must ask for it back, as I want to watch it again , asn send it to another daughter.

I thought maybe it was just me but after my sister and my mother watched the movie ..they provided the same feedback...basically...it's alright. Not the attention retentive movie. The movie background/concept sounded great but the outcome left me disappointed and wanting to return the movie...

<strong>Treeless Mountain</strong> (So-yong Kim, 2008) Not long ago I reviewed a failed-potential coming-of-age film called <em>Trees Grow Tall and Then They Fall</em> (q.v.). It has a number of thing in common with <em>Treeless Mountain</em> beyond the titles making reference to trees. In many places where the former film gets things wrong, <em>Treeless Mountain</em> gets things right, and yet for the most part it still left me kind of cold; it is possible that there's simply a failing in the attempt to translate the <em>bildungsroman</em> to film, or that neither of these directors, both of whom seemed to be going for a kind of gritty-realism-combined-with-fantasy-escapism, weren;t quite sure how to do what they wanted to do without the fantasy-escapism bit going over into the blatantly-unrealistic realms of, say, <em>The Passion of Darkly Noon</em> (or, more contemporarily, Guillermo del Toro's wonderful coming-of-age fantasies <em>El Espinazo del Diablo</em> and <em>El Laberinto del Fauno</em>), which neither director wanted to do. The end result: two oddly unsatisfying movies, though in every way that matters, <em>Treeless Mountain</em> is the superior of the two. Plot: Two young girls, Jin and Bin (non-actors Hee-yeon and Song-hee Kim, respectively; Hee-yeon has never acted before, Song-hee is on her second screen appearance here), are left by their cosmopolitan mother (Soo-ah Lee, also in her first screen appearance) with their hard-drinking, working-class aunt, known in the film only as Big Aunt (<em>Jesus Hospital</em>'s Mi-hyang Kim in her feature debut), while she goes off looking for their father after receiving a mysterious letter. Or so she says, anyway; as time goes on and she does not return, her motives become suspect. Ultimately, however, they are irrelevant, as the story focuses on the two girls, who try to make their way in their new, hardscrabble society, returning each day to a barren hillock, the treeless mountain of the title, that overlooks the bus stop where they expect their mother to return. There is a general problem with movies like this, and there is a problem more specific to this one. The general one is that nothing much really happens in such movies, and so the movie is by definition driven by characters, not plot. The choice of non-actors for most of the roles here was a bold one, but I'm not sure it was the right one given the story. To say this is not, I hope, to take anything away from those actors; they all do a very good job with what they have here, but had they had more experience under their collective belt, I think they could have turned it into a bigger, wider whole than it is. The more specific problem has to do with where Kim, who also wrote the screenplay, ends the story. I can't go into a great amount of detail without spoilers, but I think this movie woud have worked better had it ended either ten minutes before it did (before, without being spoilery, Big Aunt makes the decision that drives the last sequences of the film) or ten minutes after (in which we would have had more time to explore the ramifications of the event in question). None of this is meant to convey that I didn't like the film. I did, and I do recommend it; just be aware that what you're getting may not exactly be what you think you're getting. (A warning for the animal lovers: there is a sequence in the middle of the film that involves the roasting and eating of grasshoppers a number of times.) ***

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

I'm not usually a crier, but this one really got to me. I loved the little girls, especially the older one. I watched it on cable several times and loved it more every time. I had to have it for my collection so I ordered it. There are few characters in it, but they all did a great job. It is one my all-time favorite movies. I can't imagine any woman (especially moms and grandmas) not absolutely loving it.