Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter And Spring (DVD))

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Product:	Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter And Spring (DVD)
Date:	28/01/07 (434 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A film of rare beauty; by turns humane, perverse and tender

Disadvantages: None

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is possibly one of the most beautiful films you are ever likely to see. That I had to say first.

The director, Kim Ki-Duk, is perhaps one of South Korea’s most prolific, occasionally controversial (see Bad Guy and The Isle to understand why), filmmakers working today. Allegedly, Kim Ki-Duk though an art student, never saw a film until he was thirty. Now whether this means he never critically watched films prior to his thirties, had literally never seen a whole film or if he is attempting to create a mythology for himself much like Hitchcock might have done is hard to know. But it is hard to believe with the proliferation of cinemas, with film regularly appearing on TV that Kim Ki-Duk could really contrive never to watch a film for thirty years. Nevertheless, having seen his ‘first’ film, Kim Ki-Duk moved into cinema, churning out several disturbing and rough-around-the-edges films such as Real Fiction. These films have merit but are probably more for the Kim Ki-Duk completist. They lack a lot of the finesse and visual beauty of Kim Ki-Duk’s recent films, even if many of the themes are similar. His preoccupations with everyday individuals (even if in unusual circumstances) who are often damaged, lonely or disturbed; unable to fully function in the world and thus live in almost unreal circumstances is immediately apparent. One just needs to think of the soldiers on bizarrely heightened alert, waiting for North Korean spies to swim ashore that will never come; the mute, nameless, woman servicing the floating huts in The Isle; Chang-Guk’s mother living in an old army bus waiting for the US army father of her son to respond to the letters she writes (and again never will).

But back to Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring. Like so many of Kim Ki-Duk’s films there is almost no dialogue whatsoever (the mute woman in The Isle, technically isn’t mute, we see her on the phone even if we never hear her voice; in 3 Iron of the two protagonists one speaks three words and the other none at all). Many people who take issue with subtitles then have little to worry about, for Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is a lyrical, visually beautiful film that works as a visual poem, by turns disturbing (as all of Kim Ki-Duk’s work are, on some level) and deliciously hypnotic. Ki-Duk clearly has a love for things ‘floating’. As in The Isle, where holidaymakers come to stay in floating huts on a lake, in Sping the Buddhist Monk and his disciple live in a Monastery that floats upon a lake, a single boat existing to take them to and from the shore.

As the title suggests, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is a circular film, each season reflecting a season of life. Broken up into sections, each season opens with the opening of doors. At the edge of the lake, where the single row boat deposits the old Monk and his disciple on the shore there is a set of wooden doors, decorated and old, that open upon each section of the story.

Thus the story has only really two locales, the Monastery (and the lake upon which it floats) and the shore and mountains that border it. Though this is clearly the modern day there is almost no hint of the world beyond with the exception of the few outside characters that enter into the simple, contemplative life of the monastery.

The story is then quite simple and though this may seem like a spoiler it is not. The title, making clear the structure of the film, leaves you in no suspense as to what will happen. Clearly, Spring refers to childhood and to foolishness and learning. Summer concerns itself with growing towards adulthood, with the conflicting passion of love, life already lived and future desires. Autumn is regret, reflection and atonement, which gives way to Winter and the wisdom and enlightenment that comes with understanding brought about by Autumn. And Spring is the beginning of the cycle once more.

As we enter Spring, the old Monk teaches the child that lives with him in the monastery (how he came to be there is never explained, though this is really of very little importance) the principles of Buddhist life. The child is innocent, naïve, curious and capable of unintentional cruelty. Like each other season, there is a lesson in Spring. As the Monk observes the child tying stones to a number of different creatures, he contrives to have the child understand what the results of his actions are. The child awakes to find himself bound to a stone and told to find the creatures that he has weighted down and will not be released until has had clambered over the shore, weighted down heavily with the rock he carries on him and mentally within him, to find and release the snake, fish and frog he has unthinkingly tortured. Though perverse, this punishment fits into the flow of the film. Each act of violence or violation must be atoned for. A balance must be struck. Karma. Equally, in Autumn when the child, now a man, has returned to the Monastery, he is found by the police and is made etch out a sutra of understanding and atonement (to cleanse his heart of anger) on the floor of the Monastery, working till he collapses from exhaustion. He is then taken away by the police. But why has he gone away? Summer, leading to the awakening of passion, has him fall in love with a woman come to the Monastery to be healed by the Monk. The woman and her carer (probably her mother), who soon leaves, are the first characters to enter the world of the floating monastery and the child, now an adolescent, finds himself troubled by his passions but finally the couple give into them. Whether the Monk approves of this relationship or not is hard to say though the monk, as the adolescent makes to leave, does finally comment that the secular world is full so unknown dangers – where love and passion most often lack the purity of meditation and offer avenues to violence. And thus in the secular world, for which the adolescent is not ready, he finds love dissolves and passions can lead to violence.

Winter, then, finds the child, now both a man and have atoned for his crimes, returned to the Monastery. The old Monk, having ritually immolated himself in the boat, now gone, the man finds peace in meditation and in returning the Monastery to its former state, chipping away ice and carefully painting the wood. Carrying an effigy of the Buddha and tying a stone about himself as he had as a child, he climbs the mountains beyond the lake to cleanse himself of the last hints of the violence of his passions and meditates, observing his home and world: the lake and shore. Curiously, the child as atoned adult is played by Kim Ki-Duk himself. Having wanted to make a more meditative film you wonder if his casting of himself is symbolic and an act of atonement in itself. One of the reasons for taking the role was that he could not expect another actor to have to literally, physically carry the effigy of the Buddha up a mountain, whilst weighted down. Seemingly he did this unaided. This can hardly be coincidental.

And Spring. A veiled mother brings her child to the Monastery, as we suspect the original child must have been, to the man, now the mirror of the old Monk, and the cycle will begin again.

The film is not about story per se, but one, despite occasional perversities, that teaches kindness toward all forms of life and the goal of inner peace. Though never in a preachy manner. Nor is it New Age. It is a visual poem, lush and lyrical. It is not surprising that Kim Ki-Duk is an artist for the images are composed like pictures, each one carefully framed. It is a slow, meditative film, hypnotic and humane. It is also his most accessible. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to accept the humanity on show, even if you perhaps dislike the manner of the old Monk’s lessons. Also, this is not a didactic film, or a pompous one. It is often tragic and moving; it can also be amusing. Admittedly, there is something holistic about this film. As the monastery is settled upon the lake it concerns itself with our relationship to nature. From the simplicity of protecting the monastery from the elements to the Winter’s Monk having to cut holes in the ice to allow himself to wash. Again here is balance, between people and nature.

The careful tone and pace of the film means that it never falters, never bores or, like many films carved into clear chapters, no one season outweighs the others or feels hurried. The cycle of life that plays itself out before us is delicate, tender, harsh and brutal; but it is ultimately a beautifully constructed movie with a great deal of humanity and at its heart there is sympathy for life in all its complex network of joys, punishments, sorrows, passions and contentments. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is a film that is engrossing, enriching though never sentimental. When reviewers use the word ‘uplifting’ it usually means some hideously saccharine nonsense of triumph over adversity and celebration of something unspeakably maudlin. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is genuinely uplifting, but in a gentle, subtle, under the skin manner. It’s understated humanity and recognition of the difficulties of finding a place or path leaves you feeling oddly contemplative and having been in the presence of something truly beautiful.

Summary: A film of rare beauty; by turns humane, perverse and tender