You don't have to be a film critic to know that, while the cinema can frequently offer entertainment and diversion, it very rarely reaches the heights of transcendence, or majesty, or magnificence. Set against the natural, idyllic stillness and simplicity of a forgotten lake, however, director/actor Kim Ki-duk has achieved those exact qualities -- his breathtaking, astonishingly beautiful film SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING arrives with the gale force winds that signal a major new international talent and a watershed event in the cinema. With minimal dialogue and only five major characters, Ki-duk uses the title's seasonal metaphor to track the phases of life and the lessons brought by the experiences of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. It is a gloriously simple concept that interacts with its setting -- a floating, quiet monastery in the middle of Korea's pristine mountain forests -- to ask crucially important questions about the power of individual will and the repercussions of our choices. It is majestic without grandiosity, heartbreaking without sentimentality. It gives awe-inspiring voice to the age-old aphorism that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives...and in SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING audiences can ruminate, discover, and assess their own journeys with the 21st century's first bona fide filmmaking legend.

Mr. Kim has made other films (roughly one a year since 1996), but he has no formal training in filmmaking, having had a military career in the South Korean army before becoming a painter in Paris. It may be too facile to leap to the conclusion that Kim's freshness and vitality on the screen is a result of his lack of cinematic training; certainly, he and cinematographer Dong-hyeon Baek exhibit a classical, almost formal, delicacy in shooting that recalls the lush aesthetics of great cameramen like Christopher Doyle (In The Mood For Love), Roger Deakins (O Brother Where Art Thou?), and Chris Menges (The Mission). Truly, it seems that in every frame of SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING Kim is visibly delighting in his unbelievably luxurious setting. The film never leaves the confines of the lake valley, and Kim's camera mines unexpected cinematic riches in the interplay of water, wild life, and stone. It is easy to see a painter's eye for color, composition, and vibrancy in Kim's work, but there is a more refined sensibility at work. Kim uses landscapes as if it were an unspeaking, omnipresent character, watching and commenting on the action with the inherent divinity that nature holds.

SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING is, one may have guessed, a tone poem; still, it has a dramatic urgency that never lets the viewer wander too far. The film is suffused but not overpowered by the Buddhist philosophies that guide the lives of the Old Monk (Oh Young-Soo) and his charge, a preschool-age child who grows to manhood and beyond over the film's two-hour running time. The pair, who remain nameless throughout, tend and live in the sturdy but aged monastery that floats on a large raft in the middle of the lake. As a young boy (Kim Jong-Ho), he plays in streams and learns that life is a series of interconnecting points, whether it is the medicinal herbs he picks or the animals he finds to play with. As he reaches his teenage years (now played by Seo Jae-Kyung), his tranquil life with the Old Monk is upset by the arrival of a sick girl (Ha Yeo-Jin), whom they must nurse back to health. To tell more might ruin what is a slowly revealing flower of a story, blossoming into an astonishing portrait of two men and the common but difficult bond they share spiritually and personally.

Every detail of SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING has been undertaken with precision and care, from the extraordinary production design by Stefan Schonberg to the absolutely perfect sound and score mixing by Stephan Konken and Bon-seung Ku. Even the locale, with its partially submerged trees, changing seasons, and untouched solitude, has been carefully managed (by the South Korean government, who almost did not give Kim permission to shoot his film in this nature preserve). Such care is what great filmmaking is all about -- an obsessive attention to detail and narrative while embracing the freedom that cinema can bring to stories of the soul. If you don't put weights in your shoes at SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING, you may actually float out of the theatre when you leave.

The performances -- including one by Kim himself, as the fully-grown young monk -- give renewed meaning to the idea of soulfulness, balancing equal measures of emotion and calm. With dialogue at a minimum, it is a credit to the ensemble that they do not attempt to compensate for the lack of verbiage; instead, they find an emotional center that balances silence with tension, a world where mere glances can communicate passion and a sigh can encompass the entire world.

At a time when all art forms are rapidly devolving into arcana, irrelevancy or simple dimwittedness, an event like SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING requires a clarion call. Art, at its best, is transformational, fundamentally changing the life experience of those who witness it. Mr. Kim has achieved what has recently seemed impossible -- a poetically simple masterpiece that tells an amazing, utterly original tale which resonates through the diaspora of human life. It is, in short, the reason to go to the movies in 2004.

The late Pauline Kael, the famed critic of The New Yorker, was a passionate cheerleader for films she found to be extraordinary, ceaselessly trumpeting their charms to any and everyone within the reach of her pen or her voice. If Kim can invoke Buddhist philosophy to inspire his marvelous film, I can invoke Pauline. Go see SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING, and do not wait. Like the wind blowing through the monastery's empty dock doors and the sun-dappled trees, it quietly, beautifully, and magnificently demands your attention and your time.

-- Gabriel Shanks

Review text copyright © 2004 Mixed Reviews & the author. All rights reserved. Reproduction of text in whole or in part in any form or in any medium without express written permission of Mixed Reviews or the author is prohibited.

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