Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring
Steeped in Buddhist philosophy and set against the backdrop of a remote Korean lake, Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring focuses on the relationship between an elderly monk and his young protégé.
The film is set out in a series of five vignettes which correspond to the titular seasons. In the first, Spring, the child protégé is taught a lesson about respect. In a spirit of boyish experimentation, he ties stones around the bodies of a fish, a frog and a snake, as his master silently looks on. That night the older monk ties a heavy rock to the boy as he is sleeping, which won’t be taken off until he frees the animals. There is a comic element to this very fitting punishment, but it also places a heavy burden of responsibility on the young boy’s shoulders: if any of the animals have died as a result of their entrapment, the old man warns, “you will carry this stone in your heart for the rest of your life.”
Set in the middle of a lake, surrounded by dark, forested mountains, the hermitage is utterly isolated. Occasionally though, the outside world encroaches on the lonely existence of the two monks, such as the day when a mother visits with her daughter, who is seeking treatment for a fever. The younger monk (who by “summer” has become a man) is consumed with unspent desire for the young women and the two form a close, sexual bond. But when she returns to the outside world, the young man leaves the hermitage in pursuit of her, losing touch with his guiding principles and the wise counsel of his mentor.
There are moments of high drama, and some of the more theatrical developments in the life of the young protégé seem forced, especially since we are not privy to the events which take place in the years that pass between the different vignettes. However, the story, with its suggestions of reincarnation and redemption, maintains a sense of the calm and inner-peace which the Buddhist faith claims to enable in its followers.
That said, the lifestyle of restraint practised by the older monk and instilled in the younger from an early age fails to quench the passions of the human heart, as evinced by the young man’s spiral into jealousy and despair following his escape from the hermitage. When events come full circle, the ritual striving and asceticism that characterises the monk’s lifestyle seems pointless.
