Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter….

and Spring
Kim Ki Duk | Korea | 2003
The film is a luminous yet slightly ambiguous take on a long life, a story told with the help of seasons
representing the human life with it’s inevitable folly and the gradual journey towards dawning
consciousness and finally, rebirth. The story is set in a solitary pond in a valley with a small monastery
situated on a floating raft. An old monk and his young disciple reside in this lone setting, connected with
land only with a small rowboat. The space used in the film is extremely vital to its form as multiple
parallels can be drawn using its elements with the story of the young man and his experiences.

The story starts with Spring season with the calm water, deep green leaves and blossoming flowers. The
season brings with itself a beginning of new life, new possibilities. Meanwhile, just like the season the
little boy is shown to have curiosities and idiosyncrasies that are natural in a person of that age. He
extracts joy out of torturing animals by tying a stone to their bodies using a thread. When discovered by
his master, he is taught a lesson by getting a heavy rock tied to him. The master asks him to look for
each of the animals that he did this to and free them, in this process freeing himself of the guilt and
burden of causing suffering to another being. The use of punishments in the film has a constant
reoccurrence to emphasize on the principle of ‘what goes around comes around’. These punishments
were not given to the disciple for the simple purpose of teaching him a lesson but they had a greater,
underlying effect on the overall growth of the boy into a man with a sense of humility and humanity.

In spite of the master’s efforts to keep the young boy out of trouble, the arrival of a young girl in the
monastery causes disturbances in his peaceful life. the relationship of the young man with this woman,
in my personal opinion, is not of deep love but is merely introduced by the director as a tool to
represent the inane humanness of the disciple. The protected, solitary environment that he has grown
up in makes him even more vulnerable to the external forces when they arrive. He succumbs to his
nature as a man and develops a rather physical relationship with the girl. Though it is clear that the
purpose of the girl in the narrative is to only aid the young man’s growth from a boy to a man, I dislike
her portrayal as an object of lust and desire. Her western attires obviously stand out in the setting of the
monastery and the monks which further heightens the sense of alien attraction felt by the young monk
towards the girl.

As mentioned before, spaces in the film play an important role in carrying out the theme of the plot. In
the monastery, there are doors but no walls. In the beginning of the film, when the master wakes the
child up, he uses the door to come out, get dressed and play. In contrast to this, when he sneaks at night
to join the girl in bed while the old monk sleeps, he used the space around the door instead of using the
door itself. This act in itself speaks a lot about the way the young monk thought about his actions.
Though he seems to be out of control of his values, the burden of his master’s teachings still lies on his
head. By using the invisible walls while hiding the truth from the old monk, he crosses an invisible line
drawn so carefully throughout his years of solitude with the master. He is aware of the implications of
his actions yet, a force beyond his cohesion drives him to hide the truth from his master and succumb to
the weak nature of a man. When he is discovered by the master, lying naked with the girl in the
rowboat, there is no trace of anger on the old monk’s face. His reaction, at first comes as a surprise as
he hints that the sex may have helped in the healing of the girl’s ailment but later, as one thinks about it
in a wider context, the film does not really divide the actions of the man as good or bad, it only uses the
values and subtle rules to understand each character as an individual human being with their own
personal baggage and struggle to stay true to their principles.

The changing of the seasons, which most people witness but cannot have an effect on, offers lessons in
beauty, time and acceptance just as the ageing of a man inevitably brings along with itself, experiences
and knowledge. Each season becomes a symbol of a part of a human’s life wherein he learns about the
sufferings caused by him and to him and repercussions of both. Summer is a time of passion and heat
which is mirrored in the actions of the young man as he gives in to his natural instincts as a human being
by having an affair with the girl. The ambiguity of the film comes out as the actor who plays the young
monk changes every season while the character of the old monk remains the same. This could mean
that the director wanted to use this one character is a representation of any regular man with inane
desires and a constant force stopping him to surrender to these desires.

The film speaks very simply of the circle of life and the cause and effect nature of one’s doings and
decisions in their life. the plot offers no underlying twists or hints of surprises, there is no parallel story
in spite of the presence of multiple symbols.

“Lust leads to possession and possession leads to murder” These words spoken by the master quite
literally came true as the disciple returns to the monastery after taking his wife’s life out of rage. Fall
marks the realization and the return of a man after his sin and suffering when he goes out in the real
world of lust, greed and possession. The basic, narrow manner in which the materiality and human
desire is portrayed in the film seems flawed and creates in itself a metaphor of the flawed nature of a
man. As mentioned above, the concept on punishment holds a very important position in the film. by
not letting the young man kill himself to get rid of his misery and frustration, the master tries to engrave
a deeper sense of regret and realization in the young man. the usage of animals as a symbol for human
tendencies and their results is very apparent in the film. Snakes appear several different times in
different seasons, first in spring as the little monk’s casual treatment of the animal represents the
offhandedness and the naïve nature of a man. In the summer, just before the girl arrives, the young man
sees two snakes mating, marking the beginning of his journey away from a life of solitude and again the
snake reappears, probably as reincarnation of the old monk after he takes his own life. The master uses
the cat’s tail to write on the floor of the monastery even as the animal squirms in his hands, as if to
punish the cat itself for the sins of the young man.

The end of the film leaves you in deep thought as the mother of the child could either be the same
woman who he murdered or could just be a symbol of his sin that he has yet to pay the price for. The
recurrence of the animals he once tortured as a little child is a very simple way of reminding the
audience of his transgressions throughout his lifetime. The theme of the seasons used to represent the
circle of life is expressed in the film in a very tight, linear format which might be effective in some cases
but personally, I feel it calls for some more innuendos and subtlety which can be seen in the films
-previously studied – Poetry and Sopyonje. Though all three of them make a common rudimentary
comment on the changes that a man goes through in his life owing to the experiences one has, Spring
Summer.. does not leave room for the audience to come up with interpretations and ideas of their own
by laying out every piece of the puzzle in the film itself.