Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9536 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-09-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Working miracles with only a single set and a handful of characters, Korean director Kim Ki-Duk creates a wise little gem of a movie. As the title suggests, the action takes place in five distinct episodes, but sometimes many years separate the seasons. The setting is a floating monastery in a pristine mountain lake, where an elderly monk teaches a boy the lessons of life--although when the boy grows to manhood, he inevitably must learn a few hard lessons for himself. By the time the story reaches its final sections, you realize you have witnessed the arc of existence--not one person's life, but everyone's. It's as enchanting as a Buddhist fable, but it's not precious; Kim (maker of the notorious The Isle) consistently surprises you with a sex scene or an explosion of black comedy; he also vividly acts in the Winter segment, when the lake around the monastery eerily freezes. --Robert Horton

Synopsis
Prayer, meditation, and appreciation of nature are the sacraments by which two monks live a simple life in Korean director Kim Ki-Duk's SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING. A wise old monk (Oh Young-soo) is master to a young student, and remains so throughout the changing seasons of the younger monk's life. In springtime the young monk is a 5-year-old boy, in summer he is a teenager, in fall he is a 30-year-old man, and in winter he is in mid-life. The master and his student live in a tranquil house that floats in the middle of a pond hidden in a vast woodland. Paddling their row boat to the edge of the pond, they roam the forest collecting herbs for medicine, observing animals, and learning deep lessons about life. When a woman brings her sick daughter to the monks to be healed, a lustful relationship results between the daughter and the teenage monk. Though sex is the appropriate cure for the girl, the affair is a harbinger of evil for the monk, whose innocence is replaced by corruption. After paying for his sins over the course of many years, the monk finds inner peace and is reborn.
A spiritual soundtrack and superb nature photography make this film a joy to watch, and its story is rich with messages about forgiveness and inner peace.

Customer Reviews

Simple? Not exactly. Beautiful, yes
It came as a surprise to me to see in another review here that Kim is a Catholic, because this, his most explicitly religious film, seems 100% Buddhist to me, with its lessons of the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth (hence the title) and of the need to control passions and achieve detachment. Kim is one of those film-makers who just goes on getting better and better. Here he goes beyond the rather facile pessimism of "The Isle" The Isle [2000]to a truly profound and humanist acceptance. It is serene, slow moving as the waters of the lake where the film is set, beautifully filmed, acted by actors who seem just to be, rather than act, and never ever uses a word of dialogue unless absolutely necessary. Particularly impressive are the "Summer" sequence, in which the despairing and suicidal young man is "cured" by the task of carving a sutra (holy text)with his murderer's knife in the boards of the floating shrine, and his pilgrimage in "Winter" to the sites of his former misdeeds, weighted down by a huge stone. The music to this scene is, far from being "weird", extraordinarily powerful and moving, and I would love to have the CD. Kim uses music very sparingly, but this is an extended sequence of 15 minutes which is intense and anguished. And the photography of ice and snow is as beautiful as anything on film. The brief second "Spring" sequence offers a wonderful "coup de cinema" that I won't reveal.

If I have any reservations, I think some sequences linger slightly too long (especially the tai-kwan-do with its repeated use of freeze-frame, and the "courtship" in Spring). And for all its beauty some of the lake photography duplicates almost frame-for-frame that of "The Isle". I still think "The Bow" The Bow [2005]is Kim's most perfect film.

But these are quibbles. Enjoy and be amazed.

Simple but stunning
Stunning in its simplicity, the film portrays the life of a young boy and his teacher, a buddhist monk. As the title suggests, the film conveys the cycles of life and that everything returning to its starting point. Portrayed according to the seasons, new life, beginnings and endings in a constant cycle, starting with the boy as a youngster being taught by his wise master. He goes astray seeking life in the secular world and walks his own path which is disastrous. The boy ends up returning as a man to where he started but seeming to have finally understood what his master was teaching. The cast is small, filmed in one location with minimal dialogue and yet speaking volumes.

The spiritual journey
This film is the quinessential spiritual journey told in a very lovely, simple way. Those leading a devoted spiritual life out in the hustle and bustle of the world will be able to relate to this film even though it is set on a secluded lake. Watching it made me feel like I did while reading Siddharta by Herman Hesse.

It's unfortunate that there are not more films like this made by Western companies.