Moviegoers familiar with Asian cinema will know Kim Ki-duk, if not by name, by reputation. His 2001 "Bad Guy" focused on a mute thug who forces a young college girl into prostitution and earned him the moniker "Bad Guy director." His 1999 movie, "The Isle," had already brought him international notoriety. Juxtaposing beautiful postcard scenes with sadomasochistic sexual situations, this movie shocked audiences at Sundance according to Roger Ebert who wrote, "This is the most gruesome and quease-inducing film you are likely to have seen."
But his current film, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring," is contemplative. Set on a isolated floating temple, an old monk raises a young monk. As a child, the young monk is cruel to animals and the old monk makes him understand the consequences of his acts. In the summer, the teenage monk follows his passions for a young woman and leaves the temple. The young monk returns in autumn, having killed his wife. The old monk asks him to carve a sutra into the floorboards of the temple as the police wait. In winter, the old monk is dead and young monk becomes the old monk and must care for another orphaned boy. This young boy takes pleasure in tormenting a turtle and the cycle starts again.
Kim discussed the controversial cruelty in his earlier films through an interpreter, saying, "Those kinds of cruel acts are metaphors meant to contrast my meaning and question of what is life. In terms of historical development of films it is necessary to have violence in films. In American films violence is too much like a mannerism.
"The biggest problem for Americans understanding Korean movies is Americans love action films. But all action films have the same plot. To save one person, 10 people can die. It's okay. To create one superhero, American films naturally accept the loss of lots of extra lives. For example, the movie 'Speed' with Keanu Reeves. He saves probably 10 people who were passengers on that bus. But the movie doesn't show how many people have accidents or are killed by this bus. I think Americans, if they understand the weakness of American films, those people can easily understand my films."
"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring" is filled with Buddhist imagery and violence is only suggested. The floating temple seems like a lotus, rising above the muddy waters for a pure existence. Kim, who isn't Buddhist, lobbied Korean government for months to be allowed to build the temple on the almost 300-year-old man-made Jusan Pond. "I focused on the location because it is a very mysterious, very different, unique place. I felt inspired." He also liked "the movement, the flowing and always changing nature of water" that he had already experienced while filming "The Isle" on houseboats.
Article comments
1 - SFC SKI
I will have to look for this director's films, they should be thought-provoking.
2 - Eric Olsen
very interesting and revealing PT, thanks - this was your interview, right?
3 - Bob A. Booey
I'm not sure, but I don't think this was an actual interview. Did Purple Tigress write this for the Pasadena Weekly?
4 - Eric Olsen
I believe so - what's the word, PT?
5 - Purple Tigress
This is the interview style for feature articles. We rarely do Q&A style. Further, Q&A style is harder to do when you're working with an interpreter BTW since the sentences sometimes come out disjointed (Korean and Japanese are subject-object-verb languages while English is subject-verb-object which makes simultaneous translation hard).
Yes, I wrote this for the Pasadena Weekly.
But I always wait until they publish before I post here.
6 - Eric Olsen
Style is great and very happy to have it - there was some uncertainty as to original authorship, but I assumed it was you.
Thanks again!
7 - gordsellar
Kim has one newer movie out since the one you call his last; it's called "Samaria", which was released this summer in Korea. (It's listed in the IMDB as well: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1104118/) But I suppose that won't be on big screens outside of the country for a while. I've seen it, though. It's disturbing, and most people I know lump it with Bad Guy. It's about a couple of schoolgirls who run a little freelance prostitution service. The girl who sleeps with the men dies (jumping from a window fleeing cops barging into a hotel room during a "servicing", and the other girl, who did booking and accounting and served as lookout for police patrols, decides to sleep with each of the men in the record book and return the money her friend had taken.
Like I said, it's deeply weird and kinda twisted, but sort of interesting too.
8 - Purple Tigress
It can be a bit confusing when talking about release dates with foreign films. For example, Jet Li's Hero is set for general release this year in the US although it was shown briefly two years ago (mostly for screenings). It was up for last year's foreign film academy awards and it is already out on DVD and has been released in other countries besides the country of origin.
But the date of the interview was March/April of this year. So actually at the time of the interview it was the newest film released in this country and the movie you mention was not released even in his country and has not been released here in theaters.
His "Address Unknown" isn't widely available, so who knows when the movie will be released here (if ever)?
9 - Rodney Welch
Just saw this post, PT -- very interesting. Here's something from my own blog over the past week:
[Just saw a film titled] Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... and Spring, and it is as beautiful as it is classically perfect; an inspired work of visual story-telling where the total dialogue could fill, maybe, ten pages. Written and directed by Ki-duk Kim, this story of a Buddhist monk who raises a young boy is also, as the title suggests, about the cycle of human life: the five chapters are set in different seasons of different years, so that the story goes from the springtime of life to the winter of old age, after which the process begins again. The child at the beginning will become the old man at the end, teaching a new child all that he -- and we, as we've watched him -- has learned.
The old monk and the boy live in a house that floats on a river running through a lush green valley. At the beginning, the boy gets a lesson on the relationship between men and animals. After he ties a rock to the backs of several small animals (a fish, a frog, and a snake -- which Buddhist kids apparently regard with no fear whatsoever) for the cruel fun of seeing them struggle under the weight, the boy is punished by his master in the same way. Carrying a burden becomes the film's standard motif, as the boy falls in love, leaves the pristine sanctuary for the modern world, gets in all kinds of trouble, and ultimately returns.
This is a marvelously meditative work of art. Free-standing doors, the kind you can walk around as easily as you can enter, serve as visual symbols in the film; one seperates the bedroom of the old man and boy from the altar where they pray, and one stands between the river and the outside world.
There's also a magnificent scene, unlike anything I've ever witnessed, where the old monk writes Chinese characters all over the deck of a boat by taking a white cat and using its tail for an inkbrush.
10 - Purple Tigress
Okay...I can't stand it. You have a type: the word separate.
Otherwise, I'll write later to discuss the Buddhist symbolism, burden and the concept of emptiness.
11 - Rodney Welch
You mean typo?
12 - Purple Tigress
Ah, yes. A bitter irony: typing a typo when noting a typo.
Shouldn't play when I'm at work...
13 - Eric Olsen
reductive spiral, the coolest
14 - ARTHUR METCALFE
one of the best movies anyone would ever see simple to the piont natural amazing 6 stars
15 - Catsupporter
I enjoyed Spring, summer, fall.... but I really think the scene with cats tail being used as a paint brush is cruel and unnecessary. The cat looked tormented and scared throughout his scenes.
16 - Purple Tigress
IMHO the cat didn't look terrified or tormented.