The British "Guardian" recently selected the top 20 modern Korean films, of which "Parasite" ranked second, and the movie "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" ranked fifth (see the end of the article for the full ranking list).
Since it is a ranking, there must be some people who approve and some who do not approve. For example, I am very much in disagreement with the top five of "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring", the top ten can occupy a place, but the top five are too high.
Of course, I don't deny that "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" is a masterpiece worth watching. The score is quite high, the film is very beautiful, it has a Zen meaning, and the lens is also highly suitable for the film text, just like a concise literary short story, which has a serious discussion on religion, human nature, and natural reincarnation. But there are also many flaws that even veteran moviegoers can discern at a glance. The film has made an effort to "add to the snake" in many details, creating a sense of deliberateness and destroying the atmosphere that the film is trying to express.
Based on the above, the movie "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" is between the existence of the best work and the classic, excellent and insufficient.
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In the heart of the deep mountain lake, there is a temple where an old monk and a young monk live. The film does not explain the experiences and origins of these two people, nor does it have any explanation for the temple, and tells a five-part story based on the seasons.
In the spring, the little monks play and play, tying stones to fish, frogs, and snakes for fun. When the old monk saw this, he tied a stone to the young monk's body while he was asleep, and ordered him to untie the stone on the animal as punishment. The little monk saw the death of the fish and the snake, felt regret, and wept bitterly.
In the summer, the little monk grew into an adult and became a teenager. At this time, a sick woman was admitted to the temple to recuperate. Under the primal impulse, the little monk plays with the sick woman and has a relationship. When the old monk found out about this, he told the sick woman that her illness had healed and made her leave. The little monk, unable to suppress his impulses, left the temple.
In the autumn, the little monk returned to the temple. This time, he was 30 years old, sinking in the mortal world, killing his wife who had eloped with others, and becoming a murderer who had absconded in fear of crime. In order to calm him down, the old monk whipped him and asked him to carve scriptures on the ground with a murderous knife. Until the police took the young monk away, the old monk burned the boat in the lake and committed suicide.
In the winter, the young monk, who had completed his sentence, returned to the temple again. He became calm and resumed his practice, and at the same time, a masked woman came to the temple and sent a child, after leaving the child, the woman left at night, but accidentally fell into the lake and died when she left.
In another spring, the child grew up a little, became a little monk, and did something familiar to the audience in the play, he stuffed small stones into the belly of fish, frogs, and snakes to make fun of them...
In the movie, spring, summer, autumn and winter are the seasons, and they are also different stages of life. Spring sprouts, and as people grow, good and evil will also gush out; summer restlessness, according to the unbearable desires of human nature, also sows the seeds of tragedy; the autumn lord kills, most of the death is in the autumn, the little monk kills his wife, tries to commit suicide, the old monk self-immolation; the winter is calm, the little monk re-embarks on the path of cultivation with tenacity and asceticism...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >2. Unique space</h1>
In reality, both temples and Taoist temples are built in the mountains, and it seems that there have never been temples built in the center of the lake, and the temples built in the center of the lake are generally pavilions and the like for tourists to rest or for men and women to meet.
But the film is different from reality, director Kim Ki-duk can naturally make such a space for the shooting of the story, and the space such as "Lake Temple" does create a sense of light and light beauty, both mysterious and Zen in the public impression.
Directed by Kim Ki-duk
I have to admit that this is Kim Ki-duk's creativity and talent. This film has both the beauty of time and space, and the temple in the center of the lake here is responsible for the beauty of space, and this unique space can quickly distinguish this film from other films.
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If the Temple of the Lake is a successful idea, then the subsequent imagery display has many failures.
The small boats used by the two monks in their daily lives are painted with many patterns, including lotus flowers, flying skies, and even the place where the wooden platform meets the lake is painted with double dragons. Some people may think that these places are quite chic and rich in detail, but these patterns are really dazzling, and they have destroyed the spatial mood in terms of tone.
In the passage of "Autumn", the old monk asked the young monk to carve the scriptures on the wooden platform, and then used different dyes to smear the scriptures, which was a bit redundant, and the colorful effect was not as good as the ink directly written.
In addition, there are also several abruptnesses and divisions in the plot.
In Autumn, the old monk sees the little monk trying to commit suicide, so he holds a bamboo strip and whips, and then we see such a scene, the little monk's back is covered with blood, and he is hung on the beam. There is indeed a saying in Zen Buddhism that the head is drunk, but the treatment in the movie directly turns the temple into a torture room, which also destroys the space.
The old monk saw the little monk being taken away by the police, with his own ideas to make the boat unable to move forward, let the door not far away automatically open and close, showing some magic, maybe let the audience get interesting, but it still seems strange, because the filming method of the whole movie is realistic, here suddenly deviated - did not expect, old monk, you can actually spell, no wonder the girl is sick and does not see the doctor, come to you!
In the passage of "Winter", the little monk returned from his sentence and found a scripture when he was tidying up the house, I thought that this book would write about the history of the little monk, etc., but I did not expect that it was actually a martial arts secret book, and the little monk practiced according to the scriptures, from a person released from prison to a Shaolin martial monk with good physical fitness. Run away again - I didn't expect that the little monk your master also left you this martial arts secret book, but unfortunately did not practice earlier, and the energy may not run with the female benefactor if there is a place to vent!
The above imagery and plot can be seen as a stack of Zen meanings, but it just makes people feel strange and inappropriate.
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In this film, there are a large number of empty mirrors to show the environment and story atmosphere, at the same time, the character lines are not much, avoiding wordy and preaching, it can be said that in the shooting and text, the two form a care, giving a large number of blanks, making people have a sense of evocative longevity.
This is the intuitive feeling brought about by sight and hearing, and there is another kind of blank space in this film, that is, a great space for association.
The experience of the old monk, the life of the little monk, the medical records of the sick woman, the encounter of the little monk in the world after he left, whether the wife of the little monk is a sick woman, the life of the little monk in prison, another spring, the life of the new little monk, whether the new little monk will repeat the mistakes of human desire like the little monk...
This film has a great space for association, and each paragraph can become an accident when taken out alone, but director Kim Ki-duk does not shoot, only shoots this unique space he created, so that time changes naturally and allows the audience to associate freely.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >5. Dharma and human nature</h1>
In traditional Confucianism, the idea is that "at the beginning of man, nature is good", but Kim Ki-duk's claim in this film is "sexual evil theory", and people do not have obvious concepts of good and evil when children are chaotic, so in "Spring" and "Another Spring", we see the little monks playing with animals, they are all engaged in an unconscious evil, just to play for fun, just like the beast catches the dying prey, and has to play with it first.
The old monk gave the young monk the way to distinguish between good and evil, so that the young monk could feel the same pain as animals, so that he could understand the pain and then understand that what he was doing was evil. Once good and evil are discerned, man is intellectually and emotionally superior to the beast.
But Kim Ki-duk further made his attitude clear: religion is not omnipotent, and Buddhism is only a supplement to law and morality. It is precisely because of this that we see that the young monk who has grown up cannot suppress his desires under any circumstances, and in the "Summer", the instinctive desires of people suppress the Dharma and take the upper hand.
In different seasons, we can see the struggle between Dharma and human nature. In autumn, the struggle between human nature and Buddhism reaches its most dramatic climax. The little monk returned from the world, became a murderer for love, became a vicious face, and tried to complete his liberation by suicide, which was very ugly, while the old monk tried to temper him and calm him through preaching, whipping, corporal punishment, etc. Eventually the little monk fell into a deep sleep exhausted and was taken away by the police. The Dharma and human nature are somehow balanced, leaving the law to punish his sins.
In the winter, the once young monk fully entered middle age, inadvertently made a mistake, the masked woman fell into the well he had dug in the ice lake, he took off his clothes, tied stones to his body to walk, and punished himself with asceticism, without luck. At this time, the Dharma had calmed him down and completely suppressed the evil in human nature.
But the story is not over, the war between Buddhism and human nature is still continued by another young monk, and the audience seems to be trapped in a strange circle of human nature that cannot be escaped, with good and evil intertwined, endless life and endless.
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Based on the above, we can glimpse four layers of fun in the movie "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring".
One is from vision and image. The four seasons change, the light is bright and dark, the color of the plant also changes, the lake and mountain color, sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy and have their own beauty, giving people a great visual aesthetic experience. And the stacking of various Zen imagery, whether good or bad, is also quite charming, the temple in the center of the lake, the door without walls, the dog, chicken, cat and snake...
Second, different seasons and different stages of life take care of each other, forming an intertextuality. Narrating with seasonal attributes and life encounters is a plot and story ingenuity, and another layer of fun.
Third, as the seasons change, we witness the entanglement of human nature and religion. Sometimes nature suppresses the Dharma, sometimes the Dharma suppresses the nature, and the struggle here is endless, and it is applicable to all corners of the world, like a parable.
Fourth, the space given to the audience by a large number of blank spaces. Creating a unique space that seems to be isolated from the world, so that the story takes place here, all other origins and follow-ups are left to the viewer to think, this is the director's design and deliberate, but also to achieve a certain effect.
All kinds of fun overlap and reflect each other, which achieves the texture of this film, but also covers up many flaws in the film, which is unique among many Korean films and has become a special existence.
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The Guardian has selected the top 20 best korean modern films in the following order:
"Miss"
《Parasite》
"Old Boys"
"Poetry"
"Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring"
"Right Now Right Then Wrong"
"Miyang"
Snow Country Train
"Love Homecoming"
Sopranos: Classroom of Death
"Mother"
Mints
Drunken Painting Fairy
Paju
Memories of Killing
Rose, Red Lotus
"The Day the Pig Fell into the Well"
Hummingbird
"Cat Girl"
"Daydreaming"