Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003) starring Oh Young-Soo, Kim Jong-ho, Seo Jae-kyeong, Kim Young-min directed by Ki-duk Kim Movie Review

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003)   4/54/54/54/54/5


Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003)

On Learning Pond

On a lake in the middle of the Korean wilderness lives a Buddhist master in his small floating temple where he is teaching a young boy to be wise and compassionate. Many lessons are learned in their small world till one day the boy who is now a young man discovers a sexual yearning whilst they care for a sick girl. These initially confusing feelings lead the young man to abandon his life of contemplation on the lake to try and fit in to the modern world.

Fascinating and beautiful are the two words I scribbled down as I watched "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring" a movie which I am loathed to go in to too much detail about as I genuinely believe it is a movie which is as much about the experience as it is the look and what happens in it. But let me give you a couple of early insights to what happens in "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring". The young apprentice is asleep in the corner of the room and whilst there are no internal walls to the temple there is a door to where he sleeps which he enters and exits by it. The point of it is never explained but left to the audience to work out for themselves.

There are more clear points made in another early scene where the master discovers the boy torturing animals by tying rocks to their backs so whilst the boy sleeps the master does the same to him. It is a mix of levels which helps to make "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring" such an engaging and interesting movie as you keep watching out of a need to know what lesson is going to come next, what pearl of wisdom will be revealed to the audience whilst wondering where this is going. And when we have this young woman arrive at the temple we can clearly see she awakens something in the student he has never felt before which causes issues.

That may not sound that interesting on paper but trust me it is and as I said this is very much a movie which needs to be experienced first hand to fully comprehend how engaging it is. But on top of that there is the look and just the sight of this floating temple in a middle of a lake is captivating let alone anything else. It is scene after scene which is beautifully shot yet it isn't by any means an over artsy or constructed movie, just one which does a great job of capturing natural beauty rather than creating false beauty.

What this all boils down to is that "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring" is probably one of the most beautiful movies I have come across in a long time which at the same time manages to be so fascinating whilst also simple.


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