Not long ago, at the 92nd Academy Awards, Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" won four awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Film, becoming the first non-English film in history to win Best Picture, which aroused everyone's attention and hot discussion about Korean films, and thus knew south Korea's excellent director Bong Joon-ho.
The movie I want to talk about today, "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" comes from another famous Korean director, Kim Ki-deok, whose personal style is extremely distinct and has attracted the attention and love of many veteran fans.
"Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" tells such a story.
In spring, a young monk plays with stones tied to fish, frogs and snakes. When the old monk found out, he punished him in the same way and warned him not to come in vain.
In the summer, the little monk has grown into a teenager and is depressed because he has lived in the mountains for a long time. One day, a sick girl, accompanied by her mother, came to the temple to pay homage to the Buddha and stayed behind for recuperation. The teenager and the girl fall in love because of desire, and then elope down the mountain.
In the autumn, the young monk, who had grown into a young man, returned to the temple after his lover betrayed and killed people, and the old monk ordered him to write the Heart Sutra because of his sins. At the same time, the police who were pursuing the fugitives also rushed to the temple.
In the winter, the middle-aged man who had served his sentence returned to the temple and resumed his practice. During this time, a woman suddenly came to the temple and left a baby boy, hoping to be taken in. As the women left, they fell into an ice cave in the river.
After that, another spring arrived.
The story begins with the little monk in the spring and ends with the little monk of another spring, and in the middle of it is life that is burdened with desire and commits sins. A seemingly simple story, when Kim Ki-duk tells it in a movie, it adds rich meaning, dreamy and beautiful movie pictures, symbols with profound meanings and surreal shooting techniques, etc., creating such a life fable, which is worth our careful recollection.
In the film, the snake and water symbolize desire.
When the little monk went up the mountain to collect medicine, the old monk instructed the little monk, "Be careful, beware of snakes." But the little monk caught the snake without fear, and tied a stone to the snake's body and killed it. The snake is just a wake-up sign in the spring.
When the little monk went to the mountain to pick up the girl in front of the temple, there were snakes in front of the temple, and the snake became a symbol of lust in the summer. And it is intended to remind the audience that the root of the union of the little monk and the maiden is only their own desire.
In the winter, a woman came to the mountain to abandon the baby, and the middle-aged monk wanted to see it, and a hibernating snake suddenly swam, suggesting lust, but causing the woman to flee in a hurry and fall into the ice cave.
Water, on the other hand, is more straightforward.
In the spring, the water level of the lake is very low, and the little monks are innocent, but many people are cruel. In the summer, the water level rises, and the teenager covets beauty and cannot extricate himself from desire.
In autumn, the water surface is calm, and the young man returns from his wife-killing, waiting for redemption. In winter, the surface of the water freezes, heralding the end of everything, and the middle-aged monk begins to practice on the ice of condensed desire.
Another spring, in the mountains surrounded by dense forests, there was another little monk.
The temple in the mountain seems to be a place of liberation, but it is actually a place of suffering and reincarnation.
A small monastery built in the middle of the lake. Inside the monastery there is only one old monk and one young monk. The lake surrounds the monastery, isolating the monastery from its surroundings, while a false door at the edge of the lake separates the monastic and secular worlds we observe in the film.
The lonely temple in the mountains, the mottled Buddha statues, the surrounding mountains, the uninhabited wilderness, many rich images, coupled with the deliberately diluted language of the lines, form an oriental mystery constructed with imagery under director Kim Ki-duk's unique narrative technique. And this introverted mood and symbol appears in large quantities in the film to create a unique oriental aesthetic, exuding Zen.
The repetitive scenes in the film appear again and again, and the cycle repeats in the four seasons, explaining the identities of the little monk and the old monk. The old monk, who had already experienced everything, tried to warn the young monk through various means in order to avoid the sins and sufferings he had experienced, but all this was in vain.
In another spring, when the little monk became the old monk, another young monk, who was taught by the old monk, began to repeat the mistake of killing animals. Figuratively shows the nothingness of the experience of reincarnation in life.
As the Diamond Sutra says, "Everything that is like this is illusory, and if it is seen that it is not in phase, it is seen as it is."