Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24390 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

Spring again
Sometimes less is more -- and sometimes less is everything. Kim Ki-Duk works magic with only a few props in the ethereal, exquisite "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring," a movie that transcends its own simplicity. Beautiful, well-acted and quietly poetic, this Korean film is a movie to remember.

Somewhere in a secluded spot, surrounded by tall mountains, is a beautiful little lake, and a small Buddhist monastery floats in the middle of it. Two monks live in it -- an elderly man (Oh Young-su), and a very young boy. The boy is full of the usual hijinks and mischief, but the old monk teaches him lessons that shape him as he grows to manhood.

The young boy (Kim Young-min) learns that his childish cruelty has terrible consequences, and that if he kills anything, he will carry that "stone" with him for the rest of his life. Then, as he reaches adolescence, a young girl (Ha Yeo-jin) enters their lives -- and his heart. Filled with lust and love, the boy leaves for the outside world. But the world -- and a murder -- drives him back to where he started, to find death or redemption...

"Spring" is steeped in Buddhist teachings, but in a sense those teachings are truly universal -- all the more obvious because Kim is not a Buddhist, but a Catholic. The love of life, dangers of desire, mistakes and the danger of repeating them, and the cycles of death and birth are at the core of "Spring," and it's impossible not to be touched by those ideas being woven into a simple, straightforward plot.

The seasons parallel that of the younger monk's life, taking him from childhood to old age. It's a simple idea, but a good one. Director Kim Ki-duk (who has a starring role) gives an almost unearthly feel to the beautiful landscape, the dramatic scene on the snowy mountains, and especially to the beautiful little two-person monastery in the middle of a lake. The sight of it is almost unreal.

Oh Young-su does an excellent job with the old monk, who has the wisdom the younger man sorely lacks. His past is a mystery; the problems his disciple encounters make you wonder what caused him to stay in seclusion. Kim himself plays the mature younger man, giving a startlingly nuanced performance as the character tries to atone for his sins, and takes the place where he is most needed.

With a single set and only a few actors, Kim Ki-Duk crafts a meditative masterpiece in "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring." Quiet, heartbreaking, beautiful and deceptively simple, this film is a must-see.

Inspiring
For me, a measure of good art is how much it stays with me long after the experience. This film will stay with me for ever. To call it a film, to call it a story, would be to undersell it; it is a pure message, an allegory.

The scenery is sheer beauty and characters are so natural it's as if they are not acting at all. But the real messages of the story are layered in as many ways as you care to look for them. Yet, while you swim in the depths of its meaning, you'll smile at the ineptness of youth, the benign cunning of an old man, and even a cat tail paint brush!

Sublime
I cannot start commenting on the film without raving about the quality of the photography, it is a master class in framing and composition, how the cameraman achieved such perfection in the exposure of the film I simply look and marvel.

All this beauty is the framing for a story of the utmost simplicity, virtually without dialogue. In a tiny monastery for two in the middle of a small lake, live a Buddhist monk and one pupil, and as the seasons change the pupil and master progress through life.

The sparse dialogue means everything has to be acted out. Yeong-su Oh as the Old Monk is a wonderful mentor especially in the interaction with the boy monk played by Jae-kyeong Seo, who acts so naturally it is almost uncanny. Ki-duk Kim not only directs he also plays the pupil when he becomes an Adult Monk in Winter. The film creates a world in a microcosm in which we make contact with the meaning of life as the seasons change.

This is a film that grows in the mind for days after one has watched it. Ki-duk Kim gave us the dark side of human nature in the “Isle” and now he has followed that with a film of life enhancing simplicity. Truly sublime.