By APA Staff
So Yong Kim talks about her strategies for directing young children and the memories of her grandparents' farm in rural Korea that inspired her intimate second feature, Treeless Mountain.
There are moments in So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain where you might forget that you're watching a work of fiction. Of course, the images are too perfectly lit and framed, the storytelling too fluid for the film to actually be a documentary. But the acting is so subtle and the quiet moments are so palpable, that the anxiety feels real. Through Kim's camera, we're gently nudged into an intimate close-up of six year-old Jin (played by Hee Yeon Kim) and four-year-old Bin (Song Hee Kim), who have been deserted by their mother in the countryside of Korea.
Treeless Mountain is So Yong Kim's follow-up to her critically-acclaimed film In Between Days. Since premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, Kim has taken home the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury from the Berlin International Film Festival, the Muhr Award from the Dubai International Film Festival, the Netpac Award from the Pusan International Film Festival, and the Outstanding Director Award at this May's LA Asian Pacific Film Festival.
APA speaks with So Yong Kim about filming in Korea, finding her perfect child actors, and thinking in two languages. --Ada Tseng
Interview with So Yong Kim
May 1st, 2009
Interviewed by Ada Tseng
Video by Warren Kenji Berkey
Asia Pacific Arts: How did you find inspiration for your characters in Treeless Mountain?
So Yong Kim: I started to write this story about two sisters when I started to remember growing up in Korea and living with our grandparents. When I first began, it was a short story about these girls catching grasshoppers, grilling them and selling them for pocket change. So I started from there and began to collect more bits and pieces of what I remembered of Korea. And then I put the script together.
APA: So when you were young, you grilled grasshoppers and sold them for pocket change?
SYK: Yeah, amongst other things, but I'm not going to talk about the other stuff. [laughs]
APA: You've mentioned in previous interviews that you were very influenced by Hirokazu Kore-eda's Nobody Knows and other films. What did you learn from these films, and what did you want to do differently in your own film?
SYK: What I tried to do was watch a lot of films that I love with kids in it. Nobody Knows is a huge influence, because I think the film is so much about these quiet moments with these kids. And it doesn't feel like they're acting at all. I love that film. Also, [Jacques Doillon's] Ponette has this super young girl, and she's fantastic in it. So I tried to figure out: how did he get her to do those scenes? And then there's some great masters -- Ozu and Truffaut -- doing films about these kids growing up. So I tried to immerse myself in these films and figure out what I could take to make Treeless possible. Because there are two things they always talk about: don't work with kids, and don't work with animals in your films. There's a little stigma attached to that.
Pre-production was really intense. It took a long time to cast and to put the crew together. But then once the filming started, it was like: go, and try to get everything I can out of this situation. Every situation has its reason for existing. So I just tried to shoot everything, as much as I could with the given time that I had. At that point, everything I had tried to research and study went out the window. Everything is just in front of you. It's kind of like, do or die, because the opportunity wasn't going to come back again. It wasn't something where I could go back to Korea and re-shoot if the scene didn't work out. It was pretty much like: do it now, and don't regret it later.
APA: Well, you talk about wanting to capture it all, which makes me think that casting is so important. You found these kids -- there's something about their faces. You can get in extreme close-up and they give you so much. What were you looking for when you were casting?
SYK: Well, I really believe that kids have their personalities already in them, even if they're young and they haven't really fully developed yet. There's something innate in their genes or their makeup, that allows them to go towards certain directions. I was just looking for strong personalities. So when I interviewed them, I'd try to provoke them, ask them what kind of nightmares they have or what kind of food they love or hate. Just trying to get inside their heads somehow.
I think Hee-yeon (left, above), when I met her, it wasn't so much that she was waiting for me to ask her questions; she was asking me questions. Like, what's your deal? Why are you like this? I just loved that, because it meant she had the guts to ask me and find out for herself, what the deal was with me. I just instantly fell in love with her and her attitude and her personality.
And Song-hee (right, above) was someone who, when I saw a photograph of her, I totally thought she had this amazing smile. When she smiles, it just brightens up. But when she doesn't smile -- which is what I found out when I met her, because I had only seen photographs of her smiling -- her face is so wise somehow. She was only five when I met her, and when she wasn't smiling, it felt like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. I don't know if that makes sense, but I knew that she had had a really deep and rich experience in life already.
APA: At the Q&A of your screening at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, you talked about working with the girls, who were first-time actors --how they knew the general story, but they didn't read the script, so it was sort of like play every day.
SYK: Play every day, yeah. I mean, I say that they were playing all the time, but they would say, "No, it was work." [laughs] Yeah, so they would show up and they wouldn't know what scenes we were shooting, so I'd say, "OK, so we have this toy here that you could make Play-Doh food with, so you're going to make spaghetti and hamburgers." And they'd say, "Well, I don't want to do hamburgers. Why doesn't she do hamburgers, and I do the spaghetti?" So they'll do stuff like this, and I'd say, "Okay, you guys negotiate what you're going to do. We're going to film this, and I'll sit here and tell you what to say." So they'll start playing, and I'll put dialogue in there that I need to have for the story. Or they'll show up and fill the piggy bank, and one of them scratched the eye out, and then I'll say, "Bin, you're going to ask the piggy if the piggy is okay."
They can do that, because they know how to play with those things. So I'd try to create situations where they'll provoke each other, or they'll play together, or they'll fight. Or one will storm out and the other one will react. You know, just try to keep it dynamic. Sometimes I'll use adults to create that environment. Like [Mi-hyang Kim who plays] Big Aunt will do something; I'll ask her to provoke or punish or give candy to one girl but not the other one, and see how the other girl reacts. You know, just go about it either directly or in roundabout ways.
APA: Would you say that [your first film] In Between Days was shot in a more traditional way?
SYK: Yeah, I would say so, because for Treeless, when I was editing, I spent a tremendous amount of time cutting my voice out of the soundtrack. Because it was all over the place. Cause I'm constantly like, "Move over there. Pinch her." Or "Pull her hair. Don't say that. Say this." You know, I'm talking the whole time that we're shooting. But In Between Days was more like -- they'll go in, and I don't have to tell them what the lines are, because they knew. Well, they are adults.
APA: Was the reason you shot like that because they were kids, or do you think you would still want to work like this in the future, even if you're working with adults -- the experimenting, the playing...
SYK: Well, I think it's specific to the fact that they're kids and they're non-actors, and they didn't read the script, and I didn't want them to memorize dialogue. I think in the future, if I was working with actors, and they required a certain change -- I think it just depends on who I get to work with.
APA: Can you tell me a little about the locations? Did you shoot around your grandmother's place where you grew up?
SYK: We shot five days in Seoul, and then Hunghae for the rest of the shoot. Hunghae is where my family is originally from, and that's where my mom and my aunts all grew up. That's the place that we spent part of the time when we were living with our grandparents, but my grandparents had a farm that was even further into the countryside -- which is hard to believe. But they had this rice farm a little bit further in the mountains that was just rice farm patties and orchards. There are few places like that anymore, but their old farm still exists there. But it's impossible to shoot there, so I adapted it all so they'd shoot in Hunghae.
APA: In the film, there's not a lot of score. What was the thought process behind that decision?
SYK: There's no score, except for the final end song. I thought maybe I wanted to work with this composer who's a friend of ours, so I sent him a script back in 2006. And he read the script and he was going to work on it, but we lost touch, and we went into production in Korea in 2007. And when we came back, we started editing, and as I progressed in putting the film together, it seemed less and less likely that the music was going to come in. So at the end of it, I really felt like the music would be unnecessary. Rather than enhancing and adding to the moments in the scenes, I thought it would detract from what was going on between Jin and Bin and the emotional journey they were having.
APA: What about the choice for the very last song?
SYK: It's done by our friends Asobi Seksu, and they did the song for the end credits in In Between Days. I showed them the rough cut and asked them to compose something, and that's what they composed.
APA: Half of your crew was American, and half of them were Korean. Did that present a challenge?
SYK: Yeah, Americans and Koreans [laughs]. It's funny because we didn't have any translators to go between the two groups, so in the beginning it was a very intense way to work. Because the way that independent films work in the States and the way Korean productions are run is completely different. So [we had] two completely different cultures, minus translators. At first, I was trying to communicate between them, and then we had this PA from Chicago that was trying to help out. And he became the main translator. But he grew up in the States, so he spoke even less Korean than I did! But he did a great job, because if I was translating, then I was spending most of my time going between the two groups. But he took over that job, so it was really great.
What happened was that in Seoul, the production was so tense, because Seoul is incredibly congested, and it took a lot of time for a lot of the crew members to get to locations. And logistics were a nightmare. But thankfully, we only spent five days there before we went to the countryside. When we were stuck in Hunghae, everybody felt like they were all in this new place, so everybody -- the Americans, Koreans -- just kind of relaxed. A certain amount of city angst was gone from everybody, so it became more about exploring some place new, because no one had ever been to Hunghae. Nobody has even heard of this place before. And the air was great, food was great, all the ajima, the old ladies in town, were completely worshipping everyone on crew. So I think everyone became very settled into the film, and it became a fantastic 21 days of shooting for us.
APA: It seems like whenever there are culture clashes, it comes from people bringing in certain ideas about how things should be done. But when all bets are off, everyone's on the same team.
SYK: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Throw everything out the window.
APA: Did you write the script in English or Korean?
SYK: I write in English, and then I had the script translated and went through it. And then the Korean crew and cast went through that version of the script, and the English-speaking people were going through the English scripts. Now that you ask this question, I'm remembering -- Oh my God, I just remember one time where the scene number got changed because the translated version was an older version than the English script. Anyway... [laughs] I'm not going to go there.
APA: As a creative person, do you think think differently when you're writing in English and shooting/editing in Korean, or is it fluid because you've lived in both cultures?
SYK: I don't know. I wonder if I did think differently when I was editing the film. I don't know if there was a difference when I was editing the film, but hopefully it's not something that's whacked out. [laughs] But recently I helped [my husband] Brad [Rust Gray] edit his film, and that's all in English, and I don't know if I would have edited that any differently if it was in Korean.
But I do think there's a slight difference between my personality in English and my personality in Korean. I don't know if it's good or bad, but I know there's a slight difference. There's something about language that is so embedded in the culture, and your sense of who you are and your behavior. So I feel like when I'm in Korea speaking Korean, there's a whole new package of myself that comes in, that I was raised in. Because the Korean language has all these levels of respect for different types of people, so that all comes in. Whereas in English, it's pretty much one level, of how you speak to people.
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Published: Friday, May 22, 2009
