Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
Theatrical release poster
Title (English)	Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
Title (Korean)	봄 여름 가을 겨울 그리고 봄
Directed by	Kim Ki-duk
Produced by	Karl Baumgartner Lee Seung-jae
Starring	O Yeong-su Kim Ki-duk Kim Young-min Seo Jae-kyung Park Ji-a Ha Yeo-jin Kim Jong-ho
Release date	19 September 2003
Running time	103 minutes
Country	South Korea Germany
Language	Korean

Plot

This film is divided into five chapters which are the four seasons – spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring again. It depicts a cycle of karma, and a cycle of life.

Spring

An old monk and his disciple – a child monk live in a monastery floating in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains and woods. The only vehicle that takes the two to the surrounding mountains and the gate, yet freestanding, to the outside world is a rowboat. One day, the mischievous child monk goes to the woods alone and mercilessly ties a fish, a frog and a snake with small stones and strings. He then returns them to the nature and giggles when he sees them struggling to move freely. The omnipresent old monk witnesses the wrongdoing but doesn’t stop the child. Instead, he ties a large piece of rock to the disciple when he is asleep. When the child monk wakes up the next morning, he complains about the great burden from the rock and begs to be released. His master then tells him to go back to the woods to release the animals he mistreated yesterday, with the rock on his back. If any of them die, he will ‘carry the stone in his heart for the rest of his life’. In the end, only the frog lives. The child monk remorsefully stares at the dead snake and fish and the regretful tears teaches him a great lesson.

Summer

The child monk has turned into a 17-year-old boy. A mother and her teenage daughter visit the isolated monastery because the daughter is mysteriously ill and she hopes the old monk can cure her during her daughter’s stay. The arrival of the girl arouses the sexual desire of the boy monk. Failed to resist the temptation, the two copulate on the rocks near a stream and inside the rowboat. The forbidden affair and lovemaking are eventually discovered by the old monk. The stern-faced master warns his disciple that ‘Lust leads to desire for possession, and possession leads to murder’, which becomes a foreknowledge of the disciple’s fate. The old monk dismisses the girl since she has been ‘healed’. Heartbroken, the boy monk furtively puts the stone Buddha statue into his rucksack and leaves the temple for the secular world, following the girl.

Fall

Years have passed and the boy monk becomes a young man with beard and fully grown hair. He retreats to the monastery from the outside world with new identities – a murderer and a fugitive. He has killed his disloyal wife, presumably the girl he met in Summer, with a knife. Attempted to atone, he uses the same knife to tonsure and tries to commit suicide by covering his sense organs with thin papers written ‘shut’ in Chinese character. However, the attempted suicide is in vain as the old monk said “though you can so easily kill, you yourself cannot be easily killed’. The old monk dips the tail of his white cat in black ink and writes the Heart Sutra on the wooden deck of the floating monastery. He orders his disciple to carve every character out which will drive out the anger from his heart when he completes. Two detectives from the outside world track the fugitive to the monastery but the old monk persuades them to wait until the disciple finishes the carving. The overnight carving restores his emotional equilibrium, and he follows the detectives back to the outside world and faces the lawful punishment. Upon his departure, the old monk sets up a pyre on the rowboat, covers his sense organs with papers written ‘shut’ and self-immolates.

Winter

The uninhabited monastery is fixed in the middle of the frozen lake. The disciple, who is now a more mature adult, returns to the monastery and replaces the position of his late master. The man retrieves the relics of his master from the incineration site, wraps them in a red paper and secures them in the ice Buddha he carved. His solitary life is disturbed by the visit of a veiled mother with a baby boy. The mother’s face is not shown but the tears oozing from the veil show her sorrow. She leaves the baby behind but loses her life when she flees overnight as she falls into the hole in the lake carved by the protagonist for fresh water. Guilt-ridden, the adult monk treks up the nearby mountain while dragging a grinding stone and carrying a statue of Pensive Maitreya Bodhisattva. He struggles with the steep slopes and cold weather but eventually makes a successful ascent of the mountain and attains enlightenment. The monk sits with crossed legs alongside the Bodhisattva statue, gazing the monastery in the lake.

…and Spring

A new cycle of season starts with spring again. The baby boy left by the veiled mother has grown up to be a child monk. Similar to the protagonist’s old self, the boy enjoys cavorting tiny animals and tortures a fish, a frog and a snake by stuffing pebbles into their mouths. A new cycle of karma commences and the film ends with the Bodhisattva statue at the mountain top overlooking the monastery and the lake with a transcendental gaze…

Cast

O Yeong-su as Old Monk
Kim Ki-duk as Adult Monk
Kim Young-min as Young Adult Monk
Seo Jae-kyeong as Boy Monk
Ha Yeo-jin as The Girl
Kim Jong-ho as Child Monk
Kim Jeong-yeong as The Girl’s Mother
Ji Dae-han as Detective Ji
Choi Min as Detective Choi
Park Ji-a as The Baby’s Mother
Song Min-young as The Baby

Academic Analysis

Animals

Animals appear consistently throughout the film and they each carries symbolic meanings. In spring, the child monk plays with a puppy on the wooden deck of the floating monastery. Spring is the first seasonal chapter of the film. The appearance of a puppy symbolises innocence and childhood of the child monk. The child monk mistreats the small animals with strings and stones with a naïve look and only after the punishment of the old master, he learns what he did was wrong.

During the summer which the sexual sentience of the boy monk ripens, a rooster appears. Its first appearance is shown when the mother and teenage girl visit the monastery from the outside world. Later, upon discovering the lovemaking of the boy and the girl, the old monk uses a leashed rooster to pull the rowboat, with the naked couple asleep, back to the monastery. According to the Buddhist Wheel of Life (the bhavachakra), a rooster symbolises one of the three poisons of life. It is placed at the centre of the wheel along with a pig and a snake, and embodies the lust and desire. When the boy monk decides to follow the girl to the mundane world, he leaves the monastery with the stone Buddha statue and the rooster. With the scene of the rooster walking freely in the woods, it indicates that the desire of the boy monk has left for the outside world.

With the absence of the disciple and the stone Buddha statue, the old monk brings back a white cat to the monastery as a company. The white cat is carried in a rucksack with its head out which resembles the scene of the stone Buddha statue taken away by the boy monk in the previous chapter. The cat also goes onto the altar where the Buddha statue used to be, as if it is a replacement of the Buddha. Interestingly, instead of using a brush pen to write the Heart Sutra on the wooden deck, the old monk makes use of the cat’s tail. As the old monk says carving the Heart Sutra can clear the rage in his disciple’s mind, the white cat can be treated as an instrument to transform despair to enlightenment. The cat is found on the rowboat when the two detectives and the disciple are leaving the monastery. It then casually climbs on a tree, presumably in the outside world, as if its substitution role of the stone Buddha has been completed, since the disciple has brought back the stone Buddha statue.

Snake on the old monk's clothing

After the self-immolation of the old monk, a snake is seen gliding through the lake and back to the monastery. The snake sits on the clothing left by the old monk and is seen moving around the room when the new master of the monastery (the protagonist) prays, although winter should be its hibernation period. This convinces us that the snake is the incarnation of the master and observes his disciple even after his death. Winter is not the first chapter which a snake appears. In spring, a snake vomits blood and dies after the torture from the child monk. In summer, the teenage monk witnesses the sexual intertwining of two snakes, which symbolises the awakening of his sexual desire. Snake has been portraited as a negative symbol across Buddhism and the Bible. Snake represents aversion, one of the three poisons of life in the Buddhist Wheel of Life. According to the Wheel of Life, a rooster, a pig (which represents ignorance) and a snake bite each other’s tail and form an unbreakable circle. To break the circle, we must let go of the desire, ignorance and aversion. In the Bible, the snake (the serpent) seduced Eve to eat the fruit of the tree in the Garden of Eden. Despite God’s warning, Eve failed to resist the serpent’s temptation and shared the fruit with Adam. In the end, Eve and Adam were banished from the garden, and the serpent was punished to crawl on the ground.

When the seasonal cycle recommences with spring, the orphaned child monk plays with a turtle by constantly knocking its shell and flipping it over. Turtle is an emblem of wisdom and longevity which echoes with the enlightenment of the protagonist in the winter chapter. The three animal victims – a fish, a frog and a snake appear in the film three times – being tied with strings and stones by the young protagonist in spring, montage footage during his penance in winter, and being forcefully stuffed with pebbles by the new child monk. The repetitive appearance reflects the circularity of life.

The floating monastery in the middle of the lake is isolated from the outside world and the whole film illustrates a story in a timeless manner. Similar to the Aesop’s Fables, the animals symbolise different seasons and the director admitted that the inclusion of animal representation ‘delimits the passage of time'.

Buddha’s Gaze

Boy monk with the Buddha in summer

A filming technique called shot-reverse shot was repeatedly used in the film. This technique is often used when two characters are facing each other and the shots show what they see from their angles. From the film, despite the lack of dialogues, shot-reverse shots demonstrate the interaction between Buddha and other characters. These shots allow audiences to see who come before the stone Buddha statue – first the old monk in spring, the sleeping teenage girl in summer, the anguish murderous man in fall and the sorrowful crying mother in winter. Everyone looks at the stone Buddha and their cries have been witnessed and heard by the Buddha, yet the Buddha does nothing.

When the protagonist is younger, he often climbs and stands on the shoulder of a huge Buddha statue and gazes from the same direction. However, at that time, the young mind sees only the matters in the mundane world – the boy monk spots the mother and the girl for the first time, symbolizing the desire he faces. In contrast, the iconic scene of the adult monk sitting with crossed legs and facing the lake along with the Pensive Maitreya Bodhisattva statue indicates that he has achieved enlightenment after asceticism. Maitreya is believed to be the future Buddha and the bodhisattva of compassion. He empathizes all living beings in the earthly realm and carries the great virtue of patience. Cho suggests that the final overhead shot of the film implies Maitreya Bodhisattva peers at the lake and the temple, as if he is quietly observing people’s suffering in the secular world in microcosm.

Four Noble Truths

Pak suggests that the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism can be applied to the film. The Four Noble Truths refer to the Truth of Suffering (dukkha), the Truth of Arising (samudaya), the Truth of Cessation (nirodha) and the Truth of Path (magga). Spring illustrates the protagonist’s childhood which is the early stage in life (in the Realm of Humans of the Wheel of Life). Life is suffering with the pain of birth, old age, illness and death, which matches the first Noble Truth. In summer, the adolescent monk first discovers his sexual desire and violates the vow of celibacy. As the old monk says to his disciple that “Lust leads to desire for possession, and possession leads to murder.”, the film shows us it is the cause of suffering, corresponding to the second Noble Truth. The third Noble Truth, the Truth of Cessation, refers to the realisation of the cause of suffering and the attempt to end it. In fall, after staying in the mundane world all those years and committing murder of his wife, the protagonist finally grasps that the lust and desire have driven him to the suffering. Therefore, he flees back to the monastery and attempts to end the suffering by cutting his hair and trying to kill himself, albeit unsuccessfully. In the end, he carves the Heart Sutra as the old monk instructed. The fourth Noble Truth indicates the path that leads to the end of suffering. During winter, the much grown-up protagonist returns to the monastery, carves a Buddha from ice, trains martial arts and drags a grinding stone up to the mountain with a Maitreya Bodhisattva statue in his arm. These all can be seen as his path to salvation and enlightenment, which corresponds to the Truth of Path.

Karma (with the Wheel of Life)

The whole film, even the name of the film, shows circularity and a karmic cycle. During spring, the mischievous protagonist ties stones to the small animals but karma backfires quickly because on the next day, he gains a physical rock on his back and stores a stone of guilt in his heart. As mentioned above, snake is an animal that repeatedly appears in the film. Green and Mun commented that the death of the snake in spring symbolised‘the creation of karma’ as it indicates a bigger cycle of karma in the film. In winter, one may think the karmic cycle of the protagonist has come to an end as he takes over the place of the old monk and a seasonal cycle ends in winter. But the debris of his karmic cycle causes the death of the sorrowful mother after she falls into the hole he carved in the frozen lake for fresh water. After the climb for liberation and salvation with a Maitreya Bodhisattva and the grinding stone, the film renews with a new seasonal rotation but the fact that the new child monk torturing small animals triggers a new karmic cycle. A new start of suffering echoes the Four Noble Truths.

The concept of karma lies within a wider doctrine of the Buddhist’s Wheel of Life (the bhavachakra). The wheel represents the cyclic existence (saṃsāra) and is often depicted in Buddhist art. The centre of the wheel, shows three animals - a rooster, a pig and a snake, representing the ‘three roots of evil’. They portray desire, ignorance and aversion and bite each other’s tail to form an unbreakable circle. The second layer of the wheel represents karma and the third layer shows the 6 realms of existence – the realm of hells, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, demi-goods and gods. Beings in all these realms suffer and reborn (saṃsāra). In the Realm of Humans, although we have to experience pain of birth, death, illness and old age, the realm is still considerably desirable as human can understand the Dharma and learn Buddhism. Human beings have the opportunity to liberate and be enlightened and escape the Wheel of Life. Karma and the 12 links of dependent origination (the fourth layer) determine if one can leave his current realm and reborn in a different one (either a better or worse one depending on the deed he has done). The ultimate goal is to be enlightened and leave the wheel to the liberation of nirvana. Otherwise, the samsaric cycle goes on and the suffering continues. The new child monk in the film invokes a new cycle of karma and suffering. At the very last scene, it shows the Bodhisattva statue peering the lake and the temple. Cho believes that it delivers a message that the life is inexorable and hollow. Wisdom (the mature protagonist) shifts back to ignorance (the new child monk). Buddha quietly sees us all suffering but we must work our way out to the path of liberation on our own.

Freestanding Gate Doors

Painting of Vajra Warriors (Nio) on the gate doors

One of the absurd components of the film is the freestanding gate doors. They open at the beginning of every seasonal chapter, as if the theatrical curtains open and get ready to tell the audience a story. The so-called gate doors sit in the middle of the lake water with no other fences or boundaries. Yet every character – the old monk, the disciple and the visitors from the outside world all walk past it without astonishment or confusion. Although the freestanding gate doors are peculiar, they can be assumed to symbolise the gates guarding the sacred realm. Paintings on the door show two fierce looking and muscular guardian warriors called the Vajra Warriors or Nio who are commonly found in East Asian Buddhist temples. They guard the border between the secular and sacred realm and demand discipline. Pak even believes that the gates mean more than that but also the boundary of mind. They divide and connect the inside and the outside of mind, showing the duality of the gates. Despite the seasonal rotation and the people come and go, the floating temple and the stone Buddha statue there make the audience think it is a timeless and sanctified place. When the gates open at the beginning of each season, the camera slowly zooms in (in spring and fall chapters) as if it is inviting the audience to enter a new realm and area.

Urna

Urna

During winter, the protagonist retrieves pearl-like relics (śarīrā) from the site where the old monk self-immolated. He then wraps the relics carefully with a red paper and stuffs it at the forehead of the ice Buddha statue he carved. The circular mark or dot on the forehead in Buddhism is called the urna. The urna mark is often shown in Buddhist art and statues and indicates the wisdom of the devotee. It gives the devotee the ‘third eye’ which allows one to see through the secular world and the suffering. The relics of the old monk is put at the position of the third eye, indicating that he has acquired certain level of wisdom and can see vision beyond the others. When the old monk is alive, he also displays occult-like powers and the ability of foretelling. For example, the rowboat is the only vehicle connecting the monastery, the nearby mountains and the freestanding gate. In spring, the child monk uses the rowboat alone to head to the mountains and the stream where he tortures the animals. The old monk is in fact overseeing the matter at the back but the film does not explain how the old monk gets there. He is also well aware of the evilness of the child monk but does not intervene, knowing the small animals probably will not survive. The old monk seems to have seen beyond the suffering in this world which echoes the concept of the ‘third eye’. The assumption that he has acquired wisdom can also be shown in the scene of his self-immolation. As his disciple demonstrates, killing oneself is not an easy task. The disciple attempts to commit suicide by using rice papers written with the Chinese character ‘shut’ to cover his sense organs and tries to renunciate the five aggregates (the five psycho-physical elements – material form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness). But he does not cover his ears which indicate that his attachment with the mundane world is still present. In contrast, the old monk is capable of emptying his sense organs quickly, self-immolates and possibly transcends to a different realm.

Discussion

Is Spring a Buddhist film?

The film sparks multiple debates among scholars and film critics on whether it represents Buddhism truly or is more in kin with Christianity.

Buddhism
With no doubt, the film bases on Buddhism with the presence of monks, Heart Sutra and Buddha. However, whether the Buddhist concepts are being correctly and truly portrayed is the centre of discussion. Kwŏn classifies renunciations into three types - physical renunciation, five aggregates renunciation and Dharma Realm renunciation. The first two renunciations are represented by the abandonment of the baby boy in winter and the attempt to empty the adult monk’s own five aggregates by shutting his sense organs. For the renunciation of Dharma Realm, Kwŏn compares Spring with the famous Korean Buddhist movie Mandala (1981) by Im Kwŏn-t'aek and argues that one should seek enlightenment by helping the others to reach the final renunciation. The adult monk in Spring only seeks enlightenment for himself by dragging a grinding stone up a snowy mountain while carrying a Bodhisattva statue. Spring also fails to mention ways to liberate from saṃsāra compared to Mandala. Therefore, only two out of three types of renunciations are depicted. Another scholar comments that Spring does not have an accurate representation of the nihilism in Mahāyāna Buddhism with the introduction of the child monk in the final seasonal chapter. This film has been described by critics as an Asian film under the influence of Western culture. From Cho’s analysis, the Buddhism portrayed in the film lies closer to the ‘Western Buddhism’ than the traditional Buddhism in Korea. However, she praises the integration of Asian and Western Buddhism in the film and suggests we should embrace the diversity of Buddhism instead of confronting.

Christianity
The director was raised as a Christian which leads to speculations that the film carries Christian features. Other than the snake being able to be explained with Bible story, the plot which the protagonist returns to the monastery after the misdeed resembles the parable of the prodigal son in the bible. The biblical story describes a prodigal spends all his inheritance from his father on drinks and gambling, and ends up working in a swineherd. He later decides to go back home and beg to be a servant. Instead of being scolded, the father welcomes him warmly as he is glad to redeem his son. In the film, the disciple leaves the old monk and monastery to the mundane world. In the outside world, the disciple loses his identity as a Buddhist monk and turns into a murderous fugitive. He flees back to the monastery and begs for redemption by using the knife he used to kill his wife to cut his hair, tying himself with ropes and covering his sense organs with rice papers. Upon his arrival, instead of reporting him to the authority immediately, the old monk allows him to stay and even asks the detectives to delay the return until he has carved the whole Heart Sutra on the wooden deck.

Film critic Yi also argues that the film relates more on the original sin in Christianity. Original sin is a doctrine in the bible that every human is born evil and with original sin. This is parallel to the plot in spring when the child monk does evil deeds without much thought and becomes the start of the karmic cycle. The old monk warns the disciple that if any of the three animals dies because of his mischief, he will ‘carry the stone in his heart for the rest of his life’. Since the fish and snake do not survive, the heavy stone stays in the boy’s heart, signifying the Original sin.

There are also other scholars who believe that the religious identity in the film is ambiguous. It is possible to apply both Buddhist and Christian concepts to the film as sins and salvation are concepts in both religions. Film analysis by Green and Mun even suggest possible connections with Yin Yang philosophy, Confucianism and Jainism, demonstrating that the film can represent different religious concepts simultaneously.

Nevertheless, the director previously revealed in interviews that the he intended to use the four seasons to illustrate human life in the film rather than deliberately explaining Buddhist doctrine. He intentionally did not consult Buddhist experts nor study Buddhist books during the preparation of the film. The director mentioned he sometimes read and recite Christian credos which could possibly explain the Christian traits in the film as mentioned above.