Young Sisters Survive Abandonment in 'Treeless Mountain'

Treeless Mountain film poster.

Jin is the oldest of two sisters and the only one in school. After class ends, Jin plays pogs and she's quite good at earning a considerable stack. Due to having a little fun, Jin is late in picking up her little sister Bin from an upset caretaker. From the scene, it sounds as though the caretaker too has had enough of Jin and Bin's mother and must take frustrations out on the children. Jin and Bin's mother isn't happy either, having enforced Jin to leave the precious parts of childhood behind at way too early an age.

"Why were you late?" The mother asks.
Jin doesn't respond, likely fearing disappointment that she wasted that time playing games. 

This foreshadows the mother's role in the film, in Jin and Bin's lives. The girls did what was expected of them by the mother, but the mother reappears the moment "she's supposed to."

The mother (Soo-ah Lee), Jin (Hee-yeon Kim), and Bin (Song-hee Kim) set out for an uncertain future. 

Later on, the mother has been evicted and goes off with her daughters via bus to stay with her sister-in-law. The next day, however, the mother leaves Jin and Bin a pink plastic piggy bank and promises to return once it is filled. She either knows that they will not make enough change or that she will truly reunite with their absent father. Thus, this reveals that children alone do not make unbelievable notions-- adults living in fanciful worlds can harm the family foundation. After all, the mother has been treating Jin like a babysitter and less like a little girl. It is not that she is shirking motherly duties because she doesn't want them, she can't afford the harsh realities that come with parenting. Financial burden--even with a job--is too heavy a burden and she seems to have no where to turn. She could drop the girls off from place to place, but where can a mother go?

Bin and Jin still watch out for their mother each day and work hard for their drunken aunt-- a woman who scolds and yells. She barely gives them coins for their piggy bank. Suddenly, there are times, Jin is sent to bed without supper or their aunt is passed out drunk, leaving the girls with nothing to eat. They befriend a neighborhood boy and his sweet, affectionate mother (who gladly feeds them). In fact, the mother is like a mother they should have had, a caring, thoughtful, generous woman who always has a plate of cookies to spare. The cookies are comforting to Jin and Bin. Yet they don't want to keep using her. Instead, they find a resourceful way to support their hunger pangs and fill the piggy bank. It is the grasshopper--an ancient symbol of good luck-- that helps them.

Unfortunately, Jin and Bin will realize that sometimes adults say things they are powerless to mean.

Bin (Song-lee Kim) watches her sister, Jin (Hee-yeon Kim) prepare grasshoppers. They sell these for cheap to make money-- more so than their aunt can give. 

Writer/director/producer So Yong Kim (who has directed episodes of Queen Sugar, American Crime, Good Girls, and Divorce) has rendered a narrative rich in beautiful cinematography and laudable characters. The poignant closeups on Jin and Bin's innocent, doe-eyed faces shows that portrayers Hee-yeon Kim and Song-lee Kim expertly express the pains and sorrows of growing up motherless. Their performances are riveting and heartbreaking, great vehicles to drive the film forward as the characters move from the city life to pitiful poverty to the simplistic farm life of their grandparents. Also, the use of food is important-- the characters eating at the table, picky Jin's dislike of her aunt's food, Bin's compulsion to "eat anything," their grandmother making dough from scratch-- it is all relative.

Bin (Song-lee Kim)  and Jin (Hee-yeon Kim).

The brave, candid Treeless Mountain is an exceptional film about two little girls relying on each other for emotional, moral, psychological, and physical support. Whenever nourishment is lacking, Jin will comfort Bin and likewise. In a world that can easily leave girls behind (especially irresponsible adults), Jin and Bin have to toughen up and let their imaginations breeze into the wind. By the end, the resolution is a somber, appropriate tone to all that of which they have carried and learned from the people around them. Patience ultimately becomes their biggest foe and their greatest ally.