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

봄 여름 가을 겨울 그리고 봄 (Spring, Summer, Fall Winter.. and Spring) is a South Korean movie that was released in 2003.

I'll just keep this review short because the movie does have some kind of story but it focusses on buddhist teachings. This movie basically shows a boy being left behing at a buddhist monastery. He's raised by the monk and it's obvious he'll take the place of that monk some day. The seasons mentioned in the title are more used like metaphors and phases in the life of a human. Spring stands for the childhood, being followed by the teenage and young adult years that are symbolized by summer. Once the year is getting older, as well as a person, fall comes and symbolizes the latter adult years. While winter symbolizes the old days. And life will end just the way a year does. "And Spring" in the title basically stands for the never ending flow of life. The monk the viewer sees aging finds a baby boy again and raises him. So everything starts again.

Basically my Korean teacher told me to watch this movie to get an impression of the different seasons in Korea, and the pictures shown in this movie are definitely worth seeing. I remember when I was watching this (it was my homework, I'd love to have more homework like this) I paused the video sometimes just to take a look at the calm and beautiful scenery.
What might appeal to many people interested in Asian cultures and especially Buddhism as well as some beautiful landscape shots is that this movie works with hardly any dialogues. I think there were like five sentences spoken in the whole movie and you don't even need to understand those since it's not that important.

Regarding the fact that there's hardly any story included, the duration of more than 100 minutes is a little bit too much in my opinion though. The story itself is rather boring and slow but thinking about the buddhist meaning behind it, it works well with this movie.

7.5/10 is my personal rating and that's mainly because of the wonderful pictures. And because it's a movie you need to think about. Sure it's obviously Asian since it evolves around Asian virtues but this is also what makes some things seem mysterious. And it's actually good if you want to relax while watching a movie but you should pay a little attention since there are hidden messages and symbols.