Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)
Directed by Kim Ki-duk
An isolated lake, where an old monk lives in a small floating temple. The monk has a young boy living with him, learning to become a monk. We watch as seasons and years pass by.
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3 films that influenced this film
What critics say influenced Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
Shohei Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama, a certain influence on some of the symbology in Spring, Summer..., is also a denser and more daring meditation on some of the same themes, though the more explicitly religious valences of Spring, Summer... help give it a unique aura.
If you have seen other films by Kim Ki-duk, such as The Isle , then you won’t be surprised to find a couple of shocking scenes of cruelty and violence but here Kim pulls back giving us few shocks and more reflection.
Combining visual luster and stunning emotion, Korean filmmaker Kim Ki Duk ("The Isle'') endorses the heartening idea that a spirit need not be pristine to be worthy.
Writer-director Kim Ki-Duk usually makes dreamily violent movies like The Isle and Wild Animals, but here he keeps the clatter mostly off-screen.
Writer/director Kim Ki-duk ("The Isle") uses the seasons as a metaphor for man's life while presenting Buddhist teachings and concepts of rebirth and nirvana in Korea's 2003 submission for the Foreign Language Oscar, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring."
Where Kim's best-known movie, "The Isle," was a stomach-churner, this beautifully composed canvas is the sort of film one falls into, resurfacing at the end with great reluctance.
Like in writer/director Kim Ki-duk's previous work, such as "The Isle," there is little dialogue and little action here.
What Kim has in fact produced, though you'll have to (and should) see it to savor the flavor, is akin to what David Lynch pulled off in 1999's The Straight Story , a gentle fable that glows with the aura of neuroses briefly tamed, but also a deceptively simple parable that never quite occludes the sadness and regret that impinge on any life.