Faith & Cinema - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring

Elyzabeth Lauryl Nagode Film & Cinema Eric Robert Wilkinson 05/02/2011

Film Response #2 Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring

Kim Ki-Duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring feels less like a film about Buddhism than a visual experience of the transcendent dynamics at work in the practice of that discipline itself.  The simplicity and structure structure of the film's narrative mirrors mirrors the four noble truths upon which Buddhist doctrine rests. The lesson on compassion in spring teaches the first truth that life means suffering. The ill-fated romance that begins begins in summer makes evident the second truth truth that suffering originates in attachment. The act of penance performed in fall demonstrates the third truth that the cessation of suffering is attainable, and the healing and balance achieved a chieved in winter shows those elements of the eight-fold path that leads to the end of suffering promised in the fourth, while yet another lesson on compassion in the last spring brings the cycle back to its beginning. Cycles likes these are a fundamental part of Buddhist belief, and are suggested visually throughout the film as well. The passing of day into night and back into day. The progression of the seasons. Student becoming master to student. The daily repetition of even the smallest of ritual gestures.  The timelessness suggested suggested by these cycles is made more more resonant by the almost ethereal landscape that constitutes the entire setting of the film.

Establishing shots take the perspective of the Budhha carved into the side of  one of the deeply-forested valley walls as if watching each of the scenes that unfold beneath him in the small house that floats ungrounded on the flat surface of a soft, green lake. Clouds cling and snake slowly across the tops of  mountains that hide the rest of the world from view. Elaborately carved wooden doors open to reveal the scene at ground level by some s ome unseen force. Through each season, across each year, nothing changes but the colors native to each season in turn. Central to achieving this meditative sense of tranquility and peace central to the practice of Buddhism is a simultaneous awareness of perfect balance woven subtly throughout the film in both theme and image. Wisdom tempers innocence, and devotion restrains desire. The physically sick become healthy, the spiritually healthy become sick. Where one finds life in confinement, the other finds freedom in death. Visually, Ki-Duk fills the screen with juxtaposition: man and nature, plant and animal, fire and water, earth and sky, wilderness and civilization, old and new, light and dark, small and large. All of these elements combine to underscore the essentially Buddhist message found in the journey toward enlightenment that comprises the intellectual narrative of the film in a way that makes what might otherwise seem like a trite lesson in the virtues of the eight-fold path come alive in a way that is imminently more engaging, direct, and personally profound.