Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

The title of this film tells the plot -- the cycle of the seasons mirrors the cycle of life. Growth, wisdom and renewal are all integral elements. A young boy apprenticed to a monk living in a temple on a lake grows up exploring the far reaches of the lake and its environs, being typically innocent and cruel. His master is wise and otherworldly (for instance, how does he get the boat back to the temple so he can follow the boy around?), and guides the boy through his "spring," "summer" and "fall" seasons, and the subsequent heartbreak and tragedy that befall him. The parables and lessons the teacher provides are wryly amusing -- while the boy as a young man must laboriously carve out a sutra on the floor of the temple, the teacher has used the tip of a cat's tail as a brush to paint the sutra on the floor. This isn't the only time scenes are both funny and gravely serious at the same time. (Although the one very unfunny scene that occurs at the end of "fall" is one I'm still trying to comprehend fully.) Throughout this slow, but never plodding, film you view the temple in all its guises through all the seasons, and never once tire of watching it. It is the focal point of the film, an emblem of the cycle of birth, life and re-birth. While it is unchanging, it hosts the changes that occur, even as those changes become what has happened before. The film is a lovely fable, one that gives you enough time to ponder your own life, how it fits into the world, and what will come after you are gone.

original title: Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom
year: 2003
length: 103 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374546/combined