Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (UK: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring) is a 2003 South Korean film about a Buddhist monastery which floats on a lake in a pristine forest. The story is about the life of a Buddhist monk as he passes through the seasons of his life, from childhood to old age.
The movie was directed by Kim Ki-duk, and stars Su Oh-yeong, Kim Young-min, Seo Jae-kyung, and Kim Jong-ho. The director himself appears as the man in the last stage of life. The quiet, contemplative film marked a significant change from his previous works, which were often criticized for excessive violence and misogyny.
The film is divided into five segments (the five seasons of the title), each segment depicting a different stage in the life of a Buddhist monk (each segment is roughly ten to twenty years apart, and is physically in the middle of its titular season).
SYNOPSIS
SPRING
The wooden doors of a gated threshold open on a small monastery raft that floats upon the tranquil surface of a mountain pond. The hermitage's sole occupants are an Old Monk (OH Young-soo) and his boy protege Child Monk (KIM Jong-ho). While exploring the world in and around their secluded idyll, Child Monk indulges in the capricious cruelties of boyhood. After tying stones to a fish, a frog, and a snake, Child Monk awakens to find himself fettered by a large stone Old Monk has bound to him. The old man calmly instructs the boy to release the animals, promising him that if any of the creatures die "you'll carry the stone in your heart for the rest of your life."
SUMMER
The doors open again on Boy Monk now aged 17 (SEO Jae-kyung) who meets a woman (KIM Jung-young) making a pilgrimage with her spiritually ill daughter (HAYeo-jin). "When she finds peace in her soul," Old Monk reassures the mother, "her body will return to health." The girl awakens desire in Boy Monk and the sensual flirtation between the two of them culminates in passionate lovemaking on pond-side rocks. After a furtive but tender tryst in the abbey's rowboat, the lovers are discovered by Old Monk. The girl, now healed, is sent back to her mother. Forsaking his monastery home, the infatuated Boy Monk follows her.
FALL
Long absent from the monastery, Young Adult Monk (KIM Young-Min), now a thirty year old fugitive, returns to the abbey raft still consumed by a jealous rage that has compelled him to commit a violent crime. When Young Adult Monk attempts penitence as cruel as his misdeed, Old Monk punishes him. The Old Monk instructs Young Adult Monk to carve Pranjaparpamita (Buddhist) sutras into the hermitage's deck in order to find peace in his heart. Two policemen arrive at the abbey to arrest Young Adult Monk but thanks to Old Monk, they let Young Adult Monk continue carving the sutras. Young Adult Monk collapses from exhaustion and the two policemen finish decorating the sutras before taking Young Adult Monk into custody. Alone again, Old Monk prepares a ritual funereal pyre for himself.
WINTER
The doors open on the now frozen pond and abandoned monastery. The now mature Adult Monk (played by director KIM Ki-duk) returns to train himself for the penultimate season in his spiritual journey-cycle. A veiled woman arrives bearing an infant that she leaves in Adult Monk's care. In a pilgrimage of contrition, Adult Monk drags a millstone to the summit of a mountain overlooking the pond. As he gazes down on the pond that buoys the monastery and the mountainsides that gently hold the pond like cupped hands, Adult Monk acknowledges the unending cycle of seasons and the accompanying ebb and flow of life's joys and sorrows.
... AND SPRING
The doors open once again on a beautiful spring day. Grown from a child to a man and from a novice to a master, Adult Monk has been reborn as teacher for his new protege. Together, Adult Monk and his young pupil are to start the cycle anew...
ABOUT THE FILM
The exquisitely beautiful and very human drama SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING, starring director KIM Ki-duk, is entirely set on and around a tree-lined lake where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft amidst a breath-taking landscape. The film is divided into five segments with each season representing a stage in a man's life. Under the vigilant eyes of Old Monk (wonderful veteran theatre actor OH Young-soo), Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel.
In the intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man, experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead him, as an adult, to dark deeds. With winter, strikingly set on the ice and snow-covered lake, the man atones for his past actions, and spring starts the cycle anew...
With an extraordinary attention to visual details, such as using a different animal (dog, rooster, cat, snake) as a motif for each section, writer/director/editor KIM Ki-duk has crafted a totally original yet universal story about the human spirit, moving from Innocence, through Love and Evil, to Enlightenment and finally Rebirth.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
"I intended to portray the joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure of our lives through four seasons and through the life of a monk who lives in a temple on Jusan Pond surrounded only by nature." -- KIM Ki-duk
ABOUT THE SET
The hermitage that is the stage for SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING is an artificially constructed set made to float on top of Jusan Pond in North Kyungsang Province in Korea. Created about 200 years ago, Jusan Pond is an artificial lake in which the surrounding mountains are reflected in its waters. It retains the mystical aura of having trees more than hundreds of years old still growing within its water. LJ Film was able to obtain permission to build the set after finally convincing the Ministry of Environment through six months of negotiations.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
A unique, visionary voice within both South Korea's ongoing filmmaking resurgence and contemporary world cinema, 43 year-old acclaimed director KIM Ki-duk is a virtual autodidact. "I have been accustomed to a life quite different from other filmmakers," he says. Indeed, without benefit of a formal film school education, Mr. KIM has beaten his own path to a position of rapidly growing filmmaking eminence at home and abroad. After a customarily brief rural primary school education, he worked in factories until called for military service. During a five-year stretch in the South Korean Army, Mr. KIM developed a committed passion for painting. Upon completion of his military service, Mr. KIM moved to France, studied fine arts in Paris and sold his paintings on the streets in the south of France.
"One day," he says, "I woke to discover the world of cinema, and jumped into it." After collecting awards and accolades for his screenplay, A Painter and A Criminal Condemned to Death, Mr. KIM made his directorial debut, Crocodile in 1996. Since then KIM Ki-duk has, at the impressive speed of one film a year, created a series of films characterized by both an unblinkingly perceptive view of human behavior and a powerfully lyrical visual imagination. His films also have reflected and addressed the intersection of Mr. KIM's varied life experience with many of the questions confronting modern South Korean and world society or, as he says, "the borderline where the painfully real and the hopefully imaginative meet."
1997's Wild Animals explores North and South Korean enmity and reconciliation through the volatile friendship of two Korean exiles living in Paris. Birdcage Inn (1999 Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama Selection) probes class schisms even on the very fringes of society. The Isle (2000 Venice Film Festival, 2000 Rotterdam Film Festival, 2000 Moscow Film Festival Jury Prize and winner of the Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Award) is an intoxicating and challenging contemporary love story set in a near-mythic locale. Real Fiction (2001 Moscow Film Festival) is an ambitious real-time, multi-format experiment and Address Unknown (2001 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals) takes an unusually intimate and non-judgmental look at the fifty year US military presence in Mr. KIM's homeland.
KIM Ki-duk's newest film, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINT... AND SPRING, is a potent visualization of the passions inhabiting the human spirit and the understanding and acceptance which form the very substance of our lives. Mr. KIM is currently working on his 10th feature, a revenge story entitled Samaria.
KIM KI DUK FILMOGRAPHY
THE COAST GUARD (2002)
2003 Karlovy Vary Film Festival
BAD GUY (2002)
2002 Berlin International Film Festival
2002 Helsinki International Film Festival
ADDRESS UNKNOWN (2001)
2002 Venice International Film Festival
2002 Toronto International Film Festival
REAL FICTION (2000)
2001 Moscow International Film Festival, Competition Selection
THE ISLE (1999)
2000 Sundance Film Festival, World Cinema Award
2000 Venice International Film Festival
2000 Moscow International Film Festival, Special Jury Prize
2000 Rotterdam International Film Festival
BIRDCAGE INN (1998)
1999 Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama Selection (Opening)
1999 Moscow International Film Festival, Special Panorama Selection
1999 Montreal World Film Festival
WILD ANIMALS (1997)
1998 Vancouver International Film Festival
CROCODILE (1996)
Pusan International Film Festival
Film Review
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring Directed by Kim Ki-duk
Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment 03/04 DVD/VHS Feature Film
R - some strong sexuality
Welcome to a small Buddhist monastery situated on a raft floating in the center of a mountain pond. An old monk (OH Young-soo) is trying to pass on his wisdom to a child monk (KIM Jong-ho). His teachings are connected to the four seasons, and they accrue over the years.
The student still has some rough edges. In "Spring," the first part of the film, the boy and the master go to gather herbs from the forest for use in their healing arts. Off on his own, the boy plays a game in which he ties stones to a fish, a frog, and a snake, laughing as his victims move away slowly with their new burdens. The next day, he wakes up to discover that the Old Monk has tied a large stone on his back. He is told that he must find and release the animals and if any of them is dead, "you'll carry the stone in your heart for the rest of your life." The lesson burns its way into the boy's consciousness.
In "Summer," the young monk (SEO Jae-kyung) is 17 and just getting interested in the outside world. He is quite excited when a woman (KIM Jung-young) arrives at the monastery with her sickly daughter (HAYeo-jin). After some time spent in prayer, the Old Monk tells the mother, "When she finds peace in her soul, her body will return to health." The young Monk's desire is aroused from contact with the girl, and they eventually have sex. The Old Monk does not chastise his protégé but warns him that lust awakens the need to possess, and this can lead to even greater troubles. But the young Monk cannot hear the words and after the girl is sent away healed, he follows after her taking a Buddha statue and his few possessions.
In "Fall," the Old Monk brings a large white cat to be his companion on the raft. The Young Adult Monk (KIM Young-Min) returns to the monastery as a fugitive from the law consumed by anger. To calm him down so that he can tap into the peace within, the Old Monk orders him to carve Buddhist sutras into the deck of the hermitage. Two policemen arrive to arrest the Young Adult Monk, but they allow him to finish his penance. When he collapses in exhaustion, they help decorate the sutras before taking him away. This is a beautiful scene and a rare one — a visual metaphor for the impact of sacred teachings upon a small community.
In "Winter," many years have passed, and the Old Monk has died. Ice covers the pond when the mature Adult Monk (KIM Ki-duk, also the director of the film) returns to pick up where he left off so many years ago in his training. To make sure that his mind and body are fit, he practices a martial art on the ice. A woman who has covered her face with a purple cloth arrives at the monastery with an infant. Then, after leaving her child behind, she falls through a hole in the ice and drowns.
The Adult Monk takes out a statue of Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, then attaches a millstone to his body with a rope and drags it the top of a mountain. With this act, he carries in his heart all the suffering he has endured as well as the suffering of those he has come in contact with. From a place overlooking the pond in the distance, he meditates on Kwan Yin. Then he returns to pick up the cycle of the seasons. In "Spring" again, he begins training the child to be a monk, even as he was trained in the wisdom of Buddhism and the healing arts
This sense luscious film written and directed by KIM Ki-duk is one of the best films of the year. It is a luminous meditation on the wisdom of Buddhism and the cycles of human life as they are played out in the pristine beauty of the natural world. The images of the monastery floating on a raft are perfect in that they enable us to see the transitory and impermanent qualities of the world we live in day by day. Using the four seasons as a backdrop for the spiritual teachings of compassion, suffering, loss, desire, attachment, and transformation works perfectly. We loved feasting our senses upon the 300-year-old tree, the ripples of the pond, the varied animals at the hermitage, the mist that shrouds the pond in mystery, the monks' daily devotional rituals, and the many excursions to shore where a gate opens to the wider world that lies beyond. Everyone who experiences this extraordinary film will savor the complex emotions that make life such an exquisite spiritual teacher.
