Review of Treeless Mountain / 나무없는 산, directed by So Yong Kim

In May 2024, I watched a ridiculous amount of movies and television. My blog has been set for months because of how I’ve been chipping away at my to-do lists and cranking out blog posts/reviews on what I thought of these forms of entertainment.

But because I was preparing to move to South Korea, specifically Busan, in June 2024, I really was trying to get through as much as I could. I was moving to India right after my time in Korea, so I knew I was going to be too busy to sit down and watch anything on the various to do lists I’ve had.

Treeless Mountain was on Kanopy, which I was trying to use my credits up for, and it was a movie I had been meaning to watch for almost five years. A professor mentioned it in my Korean cinema class in undergrad years ago, and it’s been on my mind ever since.

I never had the opportunity until now, and I’m glad I finally got to watch it. It highlights various issues throughout its run time.

I can feel myself starting to ramble already, so let’s just get into the review!

Two young sisters come to the realization that their mother is not coming back for them.

In this movie, we focus on two young Korean sisters: Jin and Bin. Jin is technically our protagonist, and she is the older of the two girls. They live with their mother, but because of the amount of chores that Bin has to do, she doesn’t always get to focus on school the way she likes. She also wets the bed sometimes, and we learn that her mother is a single one.

One day, she comes home to find a bunch of people taking out their belongings from the apartment. Her mother arrives and swoops Bin and her aunt’s house. There, their mother entrusts them with a piggy bank. and says that they need to behave with their aunt. She will be back soon.

The two girls chase after her as she goes onto a bank, crying for their mother over the mountain. She doesn’t look back, and we get the sense she will not be back for the girls. Jin is upset with this revelation, and doesn’t handle it well, refusing to eat because of her sadness.

Bin makes friend with a boy with Down Syndrome, and the boy’s mother shows some kindness for them. Their aunt is an alcoholic who wants nothing to do with the kids, so this is not he ideal situation at all for the two girls. She doesn’t even cook for them, leaving them to fend for themselves.

After a boy gives Bin grilled grasshoppers, the girls decide to cook food for themselves and sell it in order to fill their piggy bank. They believe that if they make money, their mother will come back for them. Their grasshopper business prospers, but by the summer’s end, they run dry of money.

They continue waiting at the stop where their mother left them behind, too, but with no luck. Soon, their aunt reveals that their mother did not reconcile with their father, and will be unable to take care of them.

She suggested to the aunt taking the girls to her parents’ farm, and while their grandfather is angered by the girls becoming a burden and mouths to feed, their grandmother is very happy. The girls start living with their grandparents, but they don’t have much there either.

Even when asking their grandmother for new shoes, they realize she herself does not have new shoes. In an act of kindness, they give the grandmother their piggy bank, and pinky swear that one day their mother will come back for them.

Overall Thoughts

This isn’t a perfect movie, but it has a lot of heart. You begin to really feel for these kids throughout the course of the movie, as they begin with this childish hope their mother will return. For us, as the adult viewers, we never had that same hope.

The plot for this movie isn’t perfect, but it certainly is something that touched me. I knew that this was going to be one of those kinds of movies going into it, and I was honestly quite cynical.

I didn’t expect to be as touched by this movie as I expected—that’s what I’m trying to say. There aren’t a lot of frills to it, and some characters are very much archetypes, but it works well as a movie. Lots of themes about contemporary Korea and its history emerging as well.

Go watch this one if you haven’t already and want to! You might find it very worth it.

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