Contrasting Journeys at Ludlow Assembly Rooms

Sunday at Ludlow Assembly Rooms for Treeless Mountain, a tale of two little Korean girls offloaded by their mother, first to their reluctant aunt than to equally reluctant grandparents, a journey from a city to a town to a farm. Then an hour later The Road which I don’t have to précis. The first a touching and delicate film seen through the eyes of a very young child, the second a bleak view of a journey in the hope of safety from a humanity stripped to the essentials for survival.

Both are about our journey through life and our capacity to adapt and survive; the first essentially optimistic, the second less convinced. Treeless Mountain has received little publicity; it is a ‘small’ film but a delightful one. I urge you to see it.

The Road is a fine film and I am a big fan of Cormac McCarthy, but he surely didn’t write the final scene (I haven’t yet read the book). An audience that has persevered through an hour and three quarters of bleakness deserves a better finale than a two-minute hosing down with corn syrup. The story ended when the boy took the gun from his father and chose not to use it. We didn’t need the mutt, which must have been a gift from a focus group in Peoria.