Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring is the first of the transgressive and exceedingly prolific director’s films to get a proper U.S. release after the controversial Seom from 2000. The gorgeous setting is more or less the same, as is the tireless mode of transport, except this time there are more spiritual returns.
Somewhere in a fog-layered netherworld of sorts, a wise healer (Oh Yeong-su) teaches a young boy the ways of the Buddha. After tying rocks to a triumvirate of forest creatures, the boy is forced to carry a stone on his back and feel their burden. Every season is a new stage in the young boy’s life: “Summer” is his clumsy sexual awakening; “Fall” chronicles the residual damage of his lust; and “Winter” evokes his spiritual enlightenment.
The film unravels as a kind of Buddhist parable for children. Elementary, perhaps, but profoundly moving. By the time the second “Summer” rolls around, Kim’s overriding point—that the circle of life repeats itself—may already feel redundant to some, but the filmmaker’s reverence for silence and movement inspires as much awe as his locale.
Kim is a great lover of signs, and though he lays on the symbolism thick, there’s no mistaking the purity of his intent. At one point, two snakes tussle in the forest, foreshadowing the psychosexual struggle between the teenage boy and the girl who comes to be healed by his master. And in one especially ravishing shot, Kim positions the monk’s house on the lake as the world’s axis. Just as every action in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring has its own reaction, every image evokes the oneness of the characters to their surroundings.
Image/Sound
Kim Ki-duk’s films are so beautiful to look at that its nearly impossible for any DVD to do them justice. Compared to the film’s theatrically-projected image, I have to say that the quality of the image on this DVD is a little on the fuzzy side, but if colors feel a little faded, the presentation is nonetheless elegant and free of any edge enhancement or dirt. (Certainly it’s a better transfer than what First Run Features did to the director’s Seom.) The audio is lovely and unpretentious-dignified by how little it calls attention to itself.
Extras
Trailers for Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.and Spring, Zhou Yu’s Train, Carandiru, Broken Wings, Winged Migration, and Young Adam.
Overall
Call it Buddha for Hippies, and as such the last movie in the world South Park’s Cartman would ever watch.
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