Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
Encyclopedia
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring is a 2003 South Korea
n film
about a Buddhist monastery
that 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.
" on one side of the monastery deck, by dipping his cat's tail into a bowl of black ink. The apprentice eventually falls, and beginning his repentance, cuts his hair off and starts carving the Chinese characters out of the wood. As he carves and the master paints, two detectives arrive at the monastery and try to arrest the apprentice, but the master asks them to let him finish his task until the next day. The apprentice continues without stopping, and collapses into sleep immediately upon finishing. Seemingly influenced by the soothing presence of the master, the detectives help the old monk paint his apprentice's carvings in orange, green, blue and purple. The apprentice finally wakes up, and is taken away by the detectives. After they leave, the master, knowing that he is at his end, builds a pyre in the rowboat. He seals his ears, eyes, nose and mouth with paper in the same suicide ritual his apprentice performed and meditates as he is suffocated and burned to death. One can see his tears in the paper seals as flames engulf him.
said of the film: "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." http://www.sonyclassics.com/spring/
. 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 one hundred years old still growing along its shores. LJ Film was able to obtain permission to build the set after finally convincing the Ministry of Environment through six months of negotiations." http://www.sonyclassics.com/spring/
and 85 out of 100 on Metacritic
.
One of the scenes near the end of the film was excised from the UK and Danish versions of the film, likely due to claims of animal cruelty, when a cats tail was used as a paintbrush. The cat was at most "disgruntled" and was in no way harmed.
The critic Roger Ebert
included the film in his list of great movies.
", sung by Kim Young-im. The film score was composed by Ji Bark.
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
n film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
about a Buddhist monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
that floats on a lake in a pristine forest. The story is about the life of a Buddhist monk
Bhikkhu
A Bhikkhu or Bhikṣu is an ordained male Buddhist monastic. A female monastic is called a Bhikkhuni Nepali: ). The life of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis is governed by a set of rules called the patimokkha within the vinaya's framework of monastic discipline...
as he passes through the seasons of his life, from childhood to old age.
The movie was directed by Kim Ki-duk
Kim Ki-duk
Kim Ki-duk is a South Korean filmmaker noted for his idiosyncratic "art-house" cinematic works. His films have received many distinctions in the festival circuit. He is not related to the Kim Ki-duk who directed Yonggary in the 1960s...
, 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.
Synopsis
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. The segments are roughly ten to twenty years apart, and the action of each takes place during the season of its title.Spring
We are introduced to the life of the very young Buddhist apprentice living with his master on a small floating monastery, drifting on a lake in the serene forested mountains of Korea. The apprentice and his master live a life of prayer and meditation, using an old rowboat to reach the bank of the lake where they regularly go walking, for exercise and to collect herbs. One day, in a creek amongst the rocky hills, the apprentice torments a fish by tying a small stone to it with string and laughing as it struggles to swim. Shortly after, he does the same to a frog and a snake; his master quietly observes on all three occasions, and that night ties a large, smooth rock to the apprentice as he sleeps. In the morning, he tells his apprentice that he cannot take off the rock until he unties the creatures he tormented - adding that if any of them have died, he will "carry the stone in his heart forever". The boy struggles with the load on his back through the forest, and finds the fish, lying dead at the bottom of the creek, finds the frog still alive and struggling where he left it, and finds the snake in a pool of blood, presumably attacked and killed by another animal, unable to get away. The master watches as the boy begins to cry heavily at seeing what he has done to the snake.Summer
The apprentice (now in his teenage years) encounters a mother and daughter (dressed in modern clothes, indicating that the film takes place in modern times) walking along the forest path, looking for the lake monastery. The apprentice silently greets them and rows them across the lake to the monastery, where it is revealed that the daughter has an unspecified illness (she displays symptoms of a fever) and has been brought to the Buddhist master by her mother, hoping that she will be healed. The master agrees to take in the teenage girl for a time, and the mother leaves. Over the next few days, the apprentice finds himself sexually attracted to the girl, but is too shy to say anything; however, when he finds her sleeping in front of the Buddha statue, he is unable to resist groping her chest. She wakes up and slaps him. In a guilty panic the apprentice begins to pray incessantly, something his master notes as strange. Touching the apprentice's shoulder, the girl seems to forgive him. Eventually, the two wander off into the forest alone and have sex. They repeat the act over the next few nights, hiding their relationship from the master, until he discovers them asleep and naked, drifting around the lake in the rowboat. He wakes them up by pulling the plug out of the boat. Rather than expressing anger or disappointment, he merely warns his apprentice that "lust leads to desire for possession, and possession leads to murder", but does tell him that the girl will have to leave. The apprentice reacts emotionally to this, and in the middle of the night runs away from the monastery in pursuit of the girl, taking the monastery's Buddha statue and a rooster with him.Fall
Many years later, during the Fall, the aging master returns from a supply run to the local village including a cat. By chance he glimpses a warrant for the arrest of his former apprentice in a newspaper, wanted for the murder of his wife. Foreseeing the apprentice's return, he modifies the teenage monk's garments by hand, and soon afterward the adult apprentice appears in the spiritual door at the lake's edge, still full of anger and carrying the bloodstained knife with which he stabbed his wife for having started an affair with another man. Unwilling to go on, he seals his eyes, mouth and nose in a suicide ritual and sits in front of the newly returned Buddha statue, waiting for death. The master discovers him, and beats him ruthlessly, professing that while he may have killed his wife, he will not kill himself so easily. He ties his bloodied apprentice to the ceiling and sets a candle to slowly burn through the rope, then begins painting "Heart SutraHeart Sutra
The Heart Sūtra is a Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtra. Its Sanskrit name literally translates to "Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom." The Heart Sūtra is often cited as the best known and most popular of all Buddhist scriptures.-Introduction:The Heart Sūtra is a member of the Perfection of...
" on one side of the monastery deck, by dipping his cat's tail into a bowl of black ink. The apprentice eventually falls, and beginning his repentance, cuts his hair off and starts carving the Chinese characters out of the wood. As he carves and the master paints, two detectives arrive at the monastery and try to arrest the apprentice, but the master asks them to let him finish his task until the next day. The apprentice continues without stopping, and collapses into sleep immediately upon finishing. Seemingly influenced by the soothing presence of the master, the detectives help the old monk paint his apprentice's carvings in orange, green, blue and purple. The apprentice finally wakes up, and is taken away by the detectives. After they leave, the master, knowing that he is at his end, builds a pyre in the rowboat. He seals his ears, eyes, nose and mouth with paper in the same suicide ritual his apprentice performed and meditates as he is suffocated and burned to death. One can see his tears in the paper seals as flames engulf him.
Winter
The middle-aged apprentice returns to the frozen lake and to his former home, which has been drifting uninhabited for years. He finds his master's clothes, laid out just before his death, and digs his master's remains, his teeth only, out of the frozen rowboat. He carves a statue of the Buddha out of ice, wraps his master's teeth in red cloth, and sets them in the statue under a waterfall. He finds a book of choreographic meditative stances, and begins to train and exercise in the freezing weather. Eventually, a woman comes to the monastery with her baby son and a shawl wrapped around her face. She leaves her son and flees into the night, but as she runs across the frozen lake she unknowingly stumbles into the hole dug by the monk. He finds her body the next day, and he removes her from the water to look at her face, although it is not shown to viewers. He ties the monastery's large, circular stone to his body and retrieves another statue from the monastery before climbing to the summit of the tallest surrounding mountain. As he climbs, he reflects upon the fish, the frog, and the snake. He prays at the summit, and leaves the statue overlooking the monastery....and Spring
Finally, returning to "Spring", the cycle is completed: the new master lives in the monastery with the abandoned baby, now his apprentice. The boy is shown to torment a turtle, echoing his predecessor.Production
Kim Ki-dukKim Ki-duk
Kim Ki-duk is a South Korean filmmaker noted for his idiosyncratic "art-house" cinematic works. His films have received many distinctions in the festival circuit. He is not related to the Kim Ki-duk who directed Yonggary in the 1960s...
said of the film: "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." http://www.sonyclassics.com/spring/
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 Cheongsong County, North Kyungsang Province in South KoreaSouth Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
. 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 one hundred years old still growing along its shores. LJ Film was able to obtain permission to build the set after finally convincing the Ministry of Environment through six months of negotiations." http://www.sonyclassics.com/spring/
Reception
The film was received very well by critics, holding a 95% "Fresh" rating on film review aggregate website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
and 85 out of 100 on Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
.
One of the scenes near the end of the film was excised from the UK and Danish versions of the film, likely due to claims of animal cruelty, when a cats tail was used as a paintbrush. The cat was at most "disgruntled" and was in no way harmed.
The critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
included the film in his list of great movies.
Music
The traditional song used near the end of the film, while the adult monk is climbing the mountain, is called "Jeongseon ArirangArirang
"Arirang" is a Korean folk song, sometimes considered the unofficial national anthem of Korea. Arirang is an ancient native Korean word with no direct modern meaning.- Variations :...
", sung by Kim Young-im. The film score was composed by Ji Bark.