"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... And Spring" Is As Profound As It Is Visually Stunning

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... And Spring is about a monk and his apprentice. They live on a floating Buddhist temple out on the middle of a lake. The film plays out like a series of vignettes connotating not just a change in season but significant passages of time; the titles represent the literal seasons we watch the story take place during but also the figurative time in the life of the protagonist, the apprentice. We watch him as a petulant child, a reckless teenager, an angry young man, a sobered middle aged man, and finally as the very master he had such a complicated and contentious relationship with.

The film is one of accumulation. The story gains heft and resonance the further it passes along. It asks us to witness the life of a person (At times the film is marking time; letting us really sense the passage of time). He's not always a good person but his master sees something in him. There's also a sense of aging and maturity that most people have as they grow up, forced to own up to the things they've done.

There's a sereneness to the film that often contrasts with its frequently painful and sad subject matter. The film takes advantage of its gorgeous scenery. The monastery is surrounded by beautiful, pristine landscapes. There's a lovely sense of the finiteness of man in the vastness of nature. The temple is a speck, and the people on it are less than a speck.

The film, as its title suggests, is concerned with the cyclicality of life, ending on a beautiful, poignant, and appropriately melancholy note. The film is a generally melancholy one; the master keeps trying to instill wisdom upon his tutelage and keeps failing. But he keeps persevering and the boy, later a man, eventually starts to embrace the teachings. But it's a slow process. The film's first segment finds the boy tying rocks to animals, torturing them. The master ties a rock to the boy while he's sleeping and has him untie the rocks while the large stone clings to his back. He tells the boy that if any of them are dead by the time he finds them he will have a stone forever weighing on his heart. This weight is continually felt throughout and it only gets heavier as the story progresses.

Quietly contemplative and repeatedly profound Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... And Spring is an elegant, elegiac film.

Grade: A