The movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring" (2003), directed by Ki Duk Kim, is a true masterpiece, that covers philosophical ideas, like life cycle and attachment to things and people. The movie shows different life stages of young monk, who was raised by older one. In all scenes, they live in the temple, which is located in the middle of the lake, surrounded by mountains and fosters. In the first scene (Spring), boy tied a stone to the fish, frog and then to the snake. It is not clearly shown his motivation to do so, and I am not sure that he intentionally wanted to harm them. He was very young, and it is more likely that he did it because he found it interesting and amazing. However, our actions should not harm others' lives. The Buddhist monk saw his action and harshly punished his disciple by tying larger stone to his back. He wanted to give him lesson and said that he should release all animals from the stone, and if someone is dead, then "you will carry the stone in your heart for the rest of your life" (m. 16:08). Fish and snake were dead. The facial expression of disciple in these moments was priceless and very emotional. I had the opinion that he might have trauma for life. It was not clear for me, why the teacher did not help these animals; he saw everything and did nothing. I hope he might find other ways to teach him a lesson without harming animals and disciple's psychology.
In the second moment (Summer), the disciple meets a young girl and falls in love with her. He decides to go after her and renounces monasticism. His teacher said: "Lust awakens the desire to possess. And that awakens the intent to murder." (m. 47:38). He was right, at the end the disciple murdered her because of her desire to be with another man. This moment illustrates that nothing is forever, the love, desire, feelings, people are all temporary and leave all of us soon.
In the third moment (autumn), the disciple flees after murdering and returns to the isolated temple to his Buddhist teacher. The movie in this scenario raises another important question. The Buddhist monk said to his disciple: "Sometimes we have to let go of things we like. What you like, others will also like!" (57:34-57:41 m.). We can not affect to the feelings and desires of others. When we want something or someone, our emotions take hold of us, and we stop to think rationally. As a result, the desire will turn into obsession, and in this moment the obsession turned into killing the person, whom he loved. As Buddhist monk assumed, everything is temporary, and we can not control others' desires, and we sometimes can not even control our own desires and emotions. The best way in such cases is to let go of our desires and loved ones, especially when it is not mutual. I do not clearly understand the ending of the episode, when the Buddhist monk decided to commit suicide. I had some assumptions: he wanted to atone because of his poor education to his disciple or maybe he wanted to free his body and everything. Then, he was reincarnated to the snake. Reincarnation is one of the important concepts in Buddhism.
In the fourth episode (Winter), the disciple returns to the temple after the jail and again became the monk. He tied the stone and climbed to the top of the mountain with this stone. The possible reason is that he wanted to let go of the guilt, which started in the beginning of his life, when he tied the stones to animals. I think this guilt haunted him all his life up to this moment. In the beginning of this episode, woman left the child in the temple. Monk decided to raise a child as a monk.
The next episode, called Spring, is one of the most important episodes in the movie, because it shows the cyclical nature of life. Child repeats the actions of the disciple in the beginning of the movie, but instead of tying stones to the animals, child puts the stones in their mouths. It shows that everything in life repeats. The only thing that we can do is to help others not repeat our mistakes. I am very curious to know how the monk would decide to educate the new disciple. Will he choose the same method as his Buddhist teacher or another method?! We could help others live a decent life. In other cases, as its theme shows, everything will repeat in this life and spring will start again.
In this movie, I liked everything: the content, soundtracks, the acting, nature, animals. It was interesting to see some concepts and elements of Buddhism through the life of the disciple. That is why my rating for this movie is 10/10.
