CINEMATIC Review

SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING   ***1/2

Kim Ki-duk

2004

IDEA:   A monk lives with a young protégé on a small, isolated floating monastery. Here, as the seasons change and his life progresses, the boy comes to learn about the world and himself.

BLURB:   Rolling water. Fish. Mist. Doorways. Serpents. Stones. These are just some of the magisterial sights of Kim Ki-duk’s serene, contemplative filmic fable, in which otherwise ordinary products of nature gain staggering importance through use of repetition and pattern. It helps, of course, that the photography – immaculately observed and composed – is never less than glorious, but there’s real feeling and power behind those enchanting visages. Kim Ki-duk uses the natural world not as a setting but as the main character, its changes mirrored by the cycles of human life that pass through it. It is endlessly beautiful, poetic, and clearheaded, deeply visual and with very little dialogue, not afraid to let us linger inside the frame and explore its surroundings carefully. If one opens up their mind to do the same, a miraculous synchronization between art and soul is created.