Elemental cinema

"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring," director Kim Ki-Duk's visually resplendent Zen meditation on the circularity of life and the interconnectedness of man and nature, can be a challenging film to grasp for Westerners, despite the universality of its themes and images. Among the observations offered by our CineVerse group on this movie are the following:

THIS PICTURE HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS A VERY “ZEN” FILM. CAN IT ONLY BE BEST APPRECIATED BY BUDDHISTS, OR CAN NON-BUDDHIST WESTERNERS ENJOY AND APPRECIATE THIS FILM?

• Like the young monk apprentice, nearly everyone in life, regardless of your culture, religion, nationality or location, seeks guidance, wisdom, enlightenment and tutelage, and also makes mistakes. 

• Viewers from any background can also appreciate the monk’s fall from grace, repentance, redemption, and maturity. Eventually, we all become seduced by desires and later teachers of a sort by becoming parents, grandparents or elder statesmen.

• On the other hand, the film’s slow pace, lack of action and plot, focus on small, simple details and foreign setting and worldview can be difficult for westerners to appreciate and assimilate. 

WHAT THEMES ARE EXPLORED IN THIS FILM?

• The changing of seasons is an existential metaphor for a person’s life: like spring changing to summer to fall to winter, we blossom, mature, and begin to fade. 

• Lost innocence of a childhood left behind and an adult world of sin and vice.

• The circularity of life—consider how the film ends where it begins and the cycle repeats itself.

• The long-term consequences of our actions. The boy’s desire leads to crime and unhappiness.

• The universality of the human experience. It’s interesting that neither of the male leads are named, suggesting that their experiences and life lessons can be understood and incorporated by anyone.

WHAT SYMBOLS AND MOTIFS ARE USED IN THIS PICTURE?

• Animals for each season: a puppy (in spring); a rooster (in summer); a cat (in fall); a snake (in winter, possibly signifying rebirth/resurrection); as well as various animals like fish, a turtle, and a frog.

• Stones and statues—representing weights and burdens that have to be carried as well as timeless deities and objects of worship.

• Doors—which often aren’t practical doors that serve any useful purpose other than to stand as portals through which tradition and custom compel people to enter/exit.

• Sinking—of the boat, the rock-burdened frog, the frozen boat and the burned monk’s remains, and the woman who surrenders her baby to the monk and drowns.

IS THERE ANYTHING IN THIS FILM THAT DOESN’T WORK OR COULD HAVE BEEN IMPROVED UPON?

• Some have suggested that the only major female character in the movie depicts her gender in a negative light; the woman serves as a sort of unwitting femme fatale leading the monk to danger and an obstacle on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

FILMS OR WORKS OF LITERATURE THAT REMIND YOU OF SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER…AND SPRING

• William Blake’s poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience

OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY KIM KI-DUK

• The Isle

• 3-Iron

• Pieta

• Samaritan Girl