Spring, Summer, Fall Winter, and Spring” Movie Review

You don't have to be into religion to understand and allow yourself to get into this movie. Excellently set on a secluded lake in the mountains in Korea , director Kim Ki-duk has created a classic love story with a religious twist with the movie Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, And Spring. The movie doesn’t have a lot of talking and characters. The title is used to show the growing up of a young boy and shows a few valuable lessons on the way. The old man and his student live on a floating monastery, away from all life and that is significannot

because it shows that you don’t need to be around people 24/7 to live life to the fullest. To be honest I didn’t think I was going to make it through this movie. It didn’t have a lot of talking I think I could count the number of conversations on my hand. But it was something very powerful about this movie that caught me, I think it was the sense of the father and son bonding, something that isn’t very common.

Another thing that was special to me about this movie is the fact that it stays in its common setting through the whole movie. It never leaves the lake. Also how there were lessons being taught through out. One that I really found special was when the boy was a child and he tied stones to 3 different animals, cause it was his idea of having fun and the wise old monk told him to go find each animal and free them and if any of the animals were dead, then he would live with that on his heart for ever. The twist to this lesson though was the old monk tied a big stone to the kid and made him go find the animals, to show him how it felt.

The film is supposed to be about Buddhism, and don’t get me wrong it was, but I figured when I heard it was a religion filled movie I thought “ oh no another boring movie” but I was sadly mistaken. It followed the Buddhist philosophies that guide the lives of the 2 (the old monk and the boy) and gives you some life lessons that you can keep on the way.

Another thing that was weird about this movie was that no names were told at all. So if you want to refer to a character, the your going to have to stay the boy or the sick girl or the cops or something like that. I cannot

say why the director did this but there has to be some special reason for it.

The boy grows up just as normal as any other kid, he played on his own, and learned the basic childhood lessons, right from wrong, and who his lord and savior was and that life is a series of long events, some that will benefit you when you become an adult.