Movie review: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (Korean 2004)
This is the second time I watched this movie. It obviously made a deep impression on me when I watched it in Michigan Theater the first time round; it's now one of the 5 DVDs that I've ever made an effort to buy.
It's profound in its simplicity. So much so that the movie chooses its words so carefully that you can write the entire set of dialogues on a single page. There must be a reason for this. The movie provides an experience and communicates in a way that a painting does or a sculpture does or Nature itself does. The minute you try to word it, you fail miserably. It perhaps then makes no sense for me to write this review. But I will complete what I started...
The story is simple. A master and his 8 year old protege live in a monastery that's absolutely cutoff from the rest of the world. It's a floating monastery (a wooden hut) on a lake in a thick forest surrounded by mountains (the location is Jusan pond in South Korean wilderness). The movie is divided into five vignettes - each a season, each a time in the lives of the protagonists. The master is pretty much like the mountains and the lake - stable, solid, understated, all-encompassing and just the same throughout. Just as the mountains, he watches on - his student growing, changing all the time...he observes life. You wonder at various points in the movie...what must he be thinking now. But I don't think there's much that he thinks -- he's simply empty inside.
The student learns his lessons -- in spring he troubles a fish, frog and snake by tying them to stones and later repents profusely when they die. He cries and cries. The master watches on. Summer starts with a beautiful scene of two snakes copulating. The student, an adolescent now, falls in love with a visitor to this monastery, experiences lust and eventually leaves the monastery to live with her in the real world...very much in pursuit of lust. Autumn brings him back to the monastery - he's murdered his wife for loving another man...angry, revengeful, hateful. Even cops follow. The master knows what to do. He uses his cat's tail as a brush and paints the Prajnaparamita Sutra and asks him to carve the paint out on the wooden floor. By the time he finishes (the next morning), not only is he more centered (with the feelings of revenge and hate gone) but the cops seem more grounded and trusting too. They take him away. As if his life's work is over, the master quietly immolates himself on a boat...very simply and easily. Winter brings the student back - older now and wise...you can see it in his eyes (acted brilliantly by the movie's director Kim Ki-duk). He picks up where he and his master left off...sooner another protege appears...by summer, you experience the circular notion of time. Kala/ time repeats itself...it's not linear as we rationally want to believe but very much circular. The original protege is now a master allowing the new protege to experience life...allover again.
The movie has the ability to take you into yourself. It provides you an experience of the profound without difficulty or trying too hard. It doesn't advise you, give you gyan...it lets you figure things out. It leaves you a little empty...wondering, contemplating, smiling confused. It tells you that there is a whole, a larger, bigger whole that encompasses everything and that there's nothing outside it. It tells you there's nothing in it all. And it manages to tell you all this without really telling you anything at all.
Enough said. Watch it, experience it.
It's profound in its simplicity. So much so that the movie chooses its words so carefully that you can write the entire set of dialogues on a single page. There must be a reason for this. The movie provides an experience and communicates in a way that a painting does or a sculpture does or Nature itself does. The minute you try to word it, you fail miserably. It perhaps then makes no sense for me to write this review. But I will complete what I started...
The story is simple. A master and his 8 year old protege live in a monastery that's absolutely cutoff from the rest of the world. It's a floating monastery (a wooden hut) on a lake in a thick forest surrounded by mountains (the location is Jusan pond in South Korean wilderness). The movie is divided into five vignettes - each a season, each a time in the lives of the protagonists. The master is pretty much like the mountains and the lake - stable, solid, understated, all-encompassing and just the same throughout. Just as the mountains, he watches on - his student growing, changing all the time...he observes life. You wonder at various points in the movie...what must he be thinking now. But I don't think there's much that he thinks -- he's simply empty inside.
The student learns his lessons -- in spring he troubles a fish, frog and snake by tying them to stones and later repents profusely when they die. He cries and cries. The master watches on. Summer starts with a beautiful scene of two snakes copulating. The student, an adolescent now, falls in love with a visitor to this monastery, experiences lust and eventually leaves the monastery to live with her in the real world...very much in pursuit of lust. Autumn brings him back to the monastery - he's murdered his wife for loving another man...angry, revengeful, hateful. Even cops follow. The master knows what to do. He uses his cat's tail as a brush and paints the Prajnaparamita Sutra and asks him to carve the paint out on the wooden floor. By the time he finishes (the next morning), not only is he more centered (with the feelings of revenge and hate gone) but the cops seem more grounded and trusting too. They take him away. As if his life's work is over, the master quietly immolates himself on a boat...very simply and easily. Winter brings the student back - older now and wise...you can see it in his eyes (acted brilliantly by the movie's director Kim Ki-duk). He picks up where he and his master left off...sooner another protege appears...by summer, you experience the circular notion of time. Kala/ time repeats itself...it's not linear as we rationally want to believe but very much circular. The original protege is now a master allowing the new protege to experience life...allover again.
The movie has the ability to take you into yourself. It provides you an experience of the profound without difficulty or trying too hard. It doesn't advise you, give you gyan...it lets you figure things out. It leaves you a little empty...wondering, contemplating, smiling confused. It tells you that there is a whole, a larger, bigger whole that encompasses everything and that there's nothing outside it. It tells you there's nothing in it all. And it manages to tell you all this without really telling you anything at all.
Enough said. Watch it, experience it.
posted by pravs at 12:04 PM
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