Of all the world cinemas that have emerged over the past decade or so, Korea's has got to be the sexiest. And you can stop that snickering right now, because I don't make this stuff up.
Just by way of clarification, incidentally, we're talking South Korea — otherwise known as the good Korea. It's those pesky North Koreans, just for the record, whose concept of pop culture seems to consist mainly of military parades, building better bombs and monitoring the height of their fearless leader's pompadour.
Down South, however, it's another matter entirely. The international cinema scene in recent years has been shaken and stirred by a steady stream of often remarkable movies generated by South Korean filmmakers bursting with talent and hellbent on making names for themselves.
These films aren't easy to pigeonhole. Some are edgy action thrillers, like Shiri and JSA-Joint Security Area. Some are scathing social satires (Barking Dogs Never Bite) or romantic comedies (My Sassy Girl). Some are intensely introspective art films (Camel(s) and On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate). Some are surreal oddities layered with elements of psychological horror (Sorum, Memento Mori, A Tale of Two Sisters). And some of the very best of the lot are simply indescribable (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Save the Green Planet).
What all of these films have in common is a distinctly modern sensibility typified by a near-obsessive interest in sex and violence — twin obsessions taken to new levels by directors like Kim Ki-Duk, whose 1992 The Isle wallowed in prostitution and graphic mutilation in an idyllic fishing village. Those carnal urges are still visible, albeit briefly, in Kim's new film, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring, but to a much different end. Kim now seems interested in displaying the world's flaws primarily in order to show us how to transcend them.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring is probably not the best introduction to the wild world of Korean cinema, in that it's anything but wild, but it's an absolutely beautiful film in its own right. It's a gentle, unabashedly spiritual work, a quietly reflective parable that, along with Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, looks to be one of the more succinctly realized visions of Buddhist thought ever to find its way to a movie screen.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … And Spring is a film that, in its own humble way, practically demands contemplation. It's probably telling that, although the screen is filled with various bits of human activity, not a single word is uttered during the entire five or so minutes that open the movie, other than one character gently reminding another that it's time to wake up. Some will undoubtedly argue that even that small, simple line of dialogue might be well worth contemplating.
The entire film takes place in and around a small, wooden monastery floating in the middle of a beautiful lake and surrounded by lushly wooded mountains. The inhabitants of the monastery are an old monk (Oh Young-soo) and his young ward, both of whom we see at different stages of their lives as the film unfolds. The movie's elegant construction consists of five carefully calibrated vignettes, each corresponding to the seasons of the title, and each illustrating some sort of life lesson adding another piece to a Zen puzzle that only reveals its true shape in the fullness of time.
In the first vignette, the monk's young ward (Kim Jong-ho), after engaging in some typically boyish cruelty by tying pebbles to various small, woodland creatures, receives a lesson in kind when his master saddles him with a large, unwieldy stone. In the second segment, the boy has become a young adult (Seo Jae-Kyung) who finds the outside world intruding in the form of a pretty young woman (Ha Yeo-Jin) come to the isolated monastery for healing. The ailing girl prays and prays, inadvertently drives the monk-in-training crazy by exposing a bit of stray flesh, and the two are soon screwing like jack rabbits. As if it weren't already clear that the girl's purpose in the story is to represent all earthly temptation, the master chimes in a warning that "Lust awakens the desire to possess," and from there it's only a short step to still worse things.
Things become even more complicated in the third chapter, with the now thirty-ish man (played by the director himself) having become living proof of his master's earlier warning. Filled with pain and rage, the no-longer-so-young man seems determined either to obliterate the physical world or be obliterated by it, a struggle that emerges as the central dramatic conflict of a film that is anything but a traditional drama. It's a struggle that culminates in the fourth (and most visually breathtaking) segment, Winter, and then is resolved, in its way, in the fifth. Various characters enter and exit the picture, only to be replaced by others, and it's all capped by an extended depiction of human suffering almost as grueling as the one flaunted in Mel Gibson's latest opus.
If it isn't already evident from the movie's title, there's a pleasing structural symmetry to Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … And Spring, in keeping with the unending circle the film envisions as the true shape of space and time. In the course of Spring, Summer … , everything is as it was and, apparently, ever will be. The movie's individual segments stand on their own, but become significantly richer in combination with one another, ultimately achieving full power only in their totality.
The film is exquisitely photographed, lending unexpected poignancy to images that might otherwise have come off as simply prosaic, like those shots of rain spattering against the bottom of a small boat or of lilies floating along the surface of a pond. Much attention is also devoted, especially in the film's early sections, to shots of physical objects being reflected in water. It's a safe bet that these images are there to remind us that all is illusion, but considering the somewhat tricky Zen nature of Kim's project, maybe not.
It's an equally safe bet that the whole viewing experience will be all the richer the more you understand the many Buddhist symbols scattered throughout. Those demons painted on the monastery gates that open each vignette sure look scary, for instance, but are they really? And what about those paper scraps imprinted with the word "Shut" that some of the characters use to cover their eyes and mouths? For that matter, what's up with all the recurring images of snakes, some of which appear to be fornicating (although, never having actually seen snakes mate, I can't say with absolute certainty what the heck they're up to)?
Regardless of how enigmatic or even inscrutable some of it may strike us, or how slowly it all unfolds, there's no denying the pure pleasure of experiencing the simple, heart-rending beauty of the film's natural harmonies and intimate, non-digital vistas. In a summer where Hollywood has just begun to unleash its mighty arsenals of sound and fury, this just might be the anti-blockbuster you didn't even know you were looking for.
Contact Film Critic Lance Goldenberg at lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2004.