Korean director Kim Ki-duk's Buddhism-inspired fable takes place on a placid lake nestled among hills on which floats a small, one-room monastery housing two monks, one old and one young. The action takes place over the course of several years, and is divided into five sections denoted by the seasons of the title. While each section tells a story of its own, the overall plot follows the education of the younger monk, a small boy in the beginning, as he learns lessons over the course of his life from his aging counterpart. Troubled outsiders also visit the monastery seeking guidance, including an ill young woman and a man who murdered his wife. As the title suggests, the film's ultimate theme is cyclical renewal. Just as the seasons pass through phases of birth and death and rebirth, so do the lives of Kim's characters. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
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With its idyllic setting and Buddhist theme, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring might look like a startling about-face from Kim Ki-duk, whose violent, psychologically brutal films have earned him the title of Korean cinema's reigning bad boy. Kim's cinema of cruelty has polarized audiences, but even his detractors admit that his talent is undeniable, even when applied to such fare as
Bad Guy, which chronicles, in explicit detail, the degradation of a college girl forced into prostitution. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring marks a new direction for its director, but not at the expense of the intensity that has brought him such notoriety. Kim illustrates the tenets of Buddhism through vignettes rooted in the sometimes cruel realities of the world. Sexual obsession, murder, and suicide are major themes. The boy monk is shown torturing real animals in the film's first section on his way to learning about the sanctity of life. Even the gorgeous landscape in which the film is set reveals itself to be a sometimes dangerous place. In many ways, this film retrospectively illuminates his previous work. Life in Kim's films is fraught with emotional and physical violence. This film, perhaps his best, reveals the spiritual yearning behind his dark vision. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide