When it comes to Korean films at the end of the last century, there is always a unique person who can't get around - Kim Ki-duk, his works have a set of his own creative system, from "choreography", "director", and then to "acting", almost trinity of creative techniques, so that more than twenty films he has created since 1996 have received the attention of the international film industry.
The unique film art style allows you to watch his works, there will always be a feeling of "words are exhausted and endless", sometimes you will feel that the film's thinking is disordered, sometimes you will feel that the character characteristics are vague, and his films always let those who try to clearly sort out the ideas and characteristics of the film feel the "words do not meet the intention" of the loss.
Instead of most people giving his film style a lot of adjectives, I like to use vague beauty to simply summarize his film style.
Perhaps it is precisely because he has left so many "blanks" in the film that people will repeatedly play and think like appreciating ink paintings.
This Douban score of 8.5 movie "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring", the characteristics of blurred beauty are particularly strong.
<h1>The origin of human nature, the ambiguity of good and evil</h1>
In 104 minutes, the film attempts to explore the origin of human nature through the transformation of the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, five units, with different meanings.
| Spring's Killing Ring
The child monk and the old monk lived together in the lonely temple in the mountain, and one day the child monk went out to play, and in the laughter, he tied the fish in the stream, the frog, and the snake in the rock with a rope, and he smiled so happily as he watched the struggle of the small animals. Late at night, the old monk tied the stone to the boy monk's waist, and the next day warned the boy monk that if he could not save the animals, then tie the stone to his heart.
| the color ring of summer
In the temple came a young girl who was recuperating from illness. As the child monks grew older, their desires began to swell, and although the young monks had many contests between Buddha-nature and desire in the summer lake water, they finally abandoned the Buddhist taboo and stepped into the river of love, where the mountain stream was their place of affection.
This kind of desperate intercourse is devoid of emotional brewing, so when the young monk and the sick girl's body come into contact with the ship, the majestic image of the temple also begins to subvert, and in the film, there is even a floating state.
When the Buddha fell, people naturally could not stay, and the little monk finally left his master to look for the trace of the girl who had left, and the old monk also warned him at this time.
| the sins of autumn
The old monk's teachings did not change the young monk from instinctive evil to good to the Buddha, and out of jealousy, he killed his wife who betrayed him and fled back to the temple.
Even if you look back at the sins committed in childhood, you will find that the killing of young people's wives is only a continuation of the crime of animal abuse in childhood, and the abuse of existence weaker than oneself is the most instinctive desire of man.
And the emergence of lust aroused the most instinctive desire in the monk's heart in the summer, and at that time it had grown darkly from the beginning, like the ripples around the boat when it was floating, silently swaying outward.
| the redemption of winter
The young monk who returned to the temple atonement for his sins took over the mantle of the old monk after his death and began to devote himself to the Buddha. Day and night, the monks put the Buddha statue on the top of the mountain, the camera pulled far away, the small monk and the small Buddha, the original frozen lake is only the size of a mountain stone mortar, and the person is only a small point.
Another spring seems to be a metaphor for a new beginning, the child monks become old, and there are new child monks naughty, which is reincarnation.
But looking back at the boy monk's life, he went through four stages of childhood killing—juvenile sex rings—middle-aged sins—and old age detachment, and at least half of these stages were living in Buddhism. In a world full of poetry and Zen, his most primitive and instinctive desires were not suppressed, but on the contrary, they erupted more intensely.
This is not to say that the indoctrination of Buddhism is useless and vulnerable before the desires of the world.
And it is precisely because after experiencing the physical and emotional impact that the lay people who have committed sins in middle age are still willing to return to the temple of Qing cultivation, that they can highlight what is the real "birth".
The Japanese theological master Daisuke Suzuki said, "Zen exists in all personal experiences. Without the background of personal experience, ideas are difficult to convey. ”
The old monk used the way of tying stones to warn the child monks to learn to respect animals, but there was no way to teach their own experience in the matter of love, and the little monk crossed the door and left, which was also a manifestation of entering the secular world.
And after experiencing these things, and then choosing to step on the door and return, it is the "birth" of another person with a personal experience background.
<h1>A mountain, a temple and a lake for two people, a sense of reality</h1>
Since the advent of classical science, that is, Mr. Newton, the measurement of physics has begun to become more and more precise, and the traditional aesthetic pursuit of ambiguity has begun to transform into a pathological pursuit of accurate and perfect images, such as the golden ratio in classical aesthetics.
In the face of this clarity, Goethe has objected, arguing that the concept of type will make people numb to nature, and the only way for type to gain a kind of vitality is to return to the perfect appreciation of individual things without discarding intentional or noble things, for example, if you look at Chinese landscape paintings, you can't just look at the towering mountains, you can't just look at the white crane that spreads its wings, but you have to look at the virtual reality in it.
In this film, it is also true that Mr. Kim Ki-duk spent a lot of time in a limited time of 104 minutes to poetically shoot the mountain, the calm lake, and the lone temple.
The automatic opening and closing of the temple gate, the drift of the isolated island in the lake, and the small boat being controlled under the old monk's mind, like a fluttering in the lake, this is a void.
The child monks in the mountains, ignorant of good and evil, bind small animals; in summer youth, they are ignorant and break the color ring with desire; in autumn it is difficult to hide their jealousy, and eventually they kill their wives and sow sins; the weakness of human nature is true.
These virtual and real details have a strong mystic color, highlighting the unreal state in the authenticity, leading the audience to the true meaning of Zen.
Especially the scene of the door of the Lonely Temple, in the film, is alluded to the birth and not to be born, and even has the meaning of rules in the heart.
In spring, although the boy monks are inherently evil in nature, and do not know that discerning their own actions will bring misfortune to fish, frogs, and snakes, whenever they go out, they must walk through the door.
In the summer, before meeting the girl, it is also a rule, through the door, through the door. But when it comes to breaking the vows, when it is difficult to hide the desire in his heart, the existence of the door is ignored by him, this door, standing here, the person who is willing to keep in his heart will naturally pass through it, but if he does not want to keep it, he can also pass around.
In this film, Kim Ki-duk continues to think about the great dangers that man needs to face in the pursuit of desire, and even at this stage of old age detachment, the ascetic who carries stones in the mountains and forests is the director Kim Ki-duk himself.
The question of the origin of desire and destiny is an eternal theme in the artistic creation of Chinese and Western societies, in Western mythology, Xia Dang's stealing of the forbidden fruit reveals the theory of "original sin", while in Eastern mythology, the birth of mankind is in such a mysterious joyful good deed as the creation of man by Nüwa.
In Mr. Kim Ki-duk's film, it properly realizes the mixture of Chinese and Western, refines the original sin proposition in Western thinking, and uses Eastern thinking to make propositional answers - refuge in Buddhism.
This life of a person may be full of vague beauty everywhere as stated in the opening chapter, and we do not know what we are born with, and when we go on the road, we continue to increase our weight. Like in the ice and snow, Mr. Kim Ki-duk dragged the stone mill forward, when can he put it down? Maybe it's at the "top of the mountain".