Treeless Mountain

One month back, when I started seeing “Treeless Mountain”, I feel very uneasy in the first 10-20 minutes. It was series of “close-ups”, my eyes longed for long shots, but rarely saw one. Close-up after close-up, I find myself in an uncomfortable situation (maybe it is not the way I trained my eyes to watch a movie). But the cute girls in the film hold me tight in my seat. Their innocent faces told me to tolerate for some more time and I obeyed. The result was quiet interesting….after sometime I forget about the “narrow field of view” and started involve in the film. The girls lead me to the reality of life. They said “Do not live in a world where you dreamed to live…live in your real world, even how bitter it is. Many things, you can’t change but they can change you. Sometimes in the hardness of life you can find softness of humanity”.
Treeless Mountain is a children movie….but it is different from other children movies. 80% of film is made up of close-ups of the children. The plot of the film is similar to that of many other children films, where the main protagonists (children) have to suffer as they are forced(by the situation) to live away from their parents…… Here the protagonists are two small girls, who were send to their Big Aunt’s (father’s sister) house, when their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father. The mother gave a ‘piggy bank” (sambadya kudukka) to the children and promise to return when it is full. The girls are forced to acclimate to changes in their life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother's homecoming. But when the bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, they get frustrated. They say to themselves “Mummy is a liar”. Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children and took them to their grandparents' home. Here they come to learn the difficulty of life and softness of human relationships. In the end I felt it is a beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking film. There was no music in the film…..the director decided only to use ambience sound.
film is directed by So Yong Kim, who is well known for her earlier film "In Between Days" . See her interview about making of this film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osp92F4jC1M.