Film: "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...& Spring" (2003)

[Bob Pr.]

This film was shown in our monthly "Great Films @ the Cathedral" series.

"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....& Spring" (2003) Color, 103 minutes, South Korean, sub-titled. "R" rated for sexuality. Currently ranks 247 on IMDb's alltime best 250 films ever Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003) - IMDb. 95% of Rotten Tomatoes' film critics are favorable Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes It's a "Roger Ebert Great Film" Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring :: rogerebert.com :: Great Movies

Video clips: Videos and Trailers: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)

<My review after seeing it a second time, about 7 years later, follows this first one written for IMDb in June 2004 (WARNING: SECOND REVIEW HAS SPOILERS) >

This beautiful film is one to see more than once -- either in the theater (or in your mind's eye).

The setting and the photography that captures it are strikingly beautiful and satisfying. The issues are so universally human that the Buddhist flavor provides an accent and not a barrier.

The story recounts the growth of a child into his adulthood and his eventual reclaiming of his roots and meaning. While the film deals with other Buddhist principles and symbolic elements, a central part of it reminds me of lines from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" which reads (loosely remembered) '...and the aim of all our wandering is to arrive again at the place from which we started and know it for the first time...'

As one sees one cycle end and another begin, it made me wonder about how the old monk first got there and what his life had been like.

Symbolic. Complex. Elegantly simple. Beautiful. Evocative. Haunting. Provocative. Gently touching the universal religious and the profound.

10/10
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My 2nd review:

(SPOILERS IN THIS) After 2nd time (02Mar2011): Buddhists are against hurting animals. SO why wouldn't a wise monk intervene when the young boy in his care was tying stones to the animals? --BEFORE they died?
And be aware that teenagers have hormones that often steer them?
The film's recurring gratuitous punitiveness bothered me:
-- the monk beating the young man's back,
-- havingto carve 100s of characters into the wooden deck,
-- the pulling the weight up the mountain,
-- the nude torso in winter, etc.

As if enduring pain for pain's sake helps anything but masochism or sadism.

But the film's photography did remain beautiful the 2nd time.

6/10