Movie Review: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring

Imagine a cessation of all the tumult associated with western urban society. A dissipation of the technological and mechanised pandemonium that copulates with our aural senses relentlessly everyday. A levelling out of the frequencies discharged by any number of PDAs, UMDs or GPSs. The virus of rambunctious adolescents running around the suburbs brandishing toy guns and enacting assassination on any nonchalant passer-by remedied by silence. The fabric of quiet asphyxiating the hubbub of vehicular extravagance. An establishment of placidity, accented only with the murmurs of the serene.

Add to this some of the most beautiful scenery South Korea has to offer, and you have the setting for Ki-duk Kim’s film, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring.

The film is painted on a canvas of luscious woodland greens and spellbinding acute-angled valleys. Most of the narrative takes place on a wooden hermitage floating atop a lake in a location brimming with rurality. This picturesque stage will steal your breath, with its still waters, rocky outcroppings, and verdant flanks of foliage. It’s an amazing backdrop of tranquillity, and suits the story to perfection.

The life of a monk dwells at the crux of this film. The plot is subdivided into a quintet, each one following the flow of seasons laid out by the title. Each change of season is met with a progression in the temporal world, a jump forward, while at the same time showcasing the variance of each seasonal period.

Spring ignites proceedings as we are given the reins of apprehension and the plot is instilled. We meet an old monk living on the floating habitat, training up the mind of a youthful infant in the ways of Buddhist belief. It’s a life of meditation; one where desire is cast off into the flames of rejection, one where enlightenment jams with halcyon in the garage of peace. Our young apprentice has yet to achieve such high metaphysical triumphs, for he takes more pleasure in the torture of defenceless animals than the torture of material want. He scuttles and chuckles as he ties heavy rocks around the bodies of a fish, a frog, and a snake, and observes as their movements are inhibited by this affliction, like Sisyphus condemned to life in a pond. This brattish behaviour is witnessed by the wise, old master, who sentences him to bear the burden of a large stone tied around his waist until he finds and emancipates those he harmed. An important lesson learned.

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic and the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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