| “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring” on Moscow screens Two people live in a floating pagoda, where there are doors but no walls, swaying on the measured waves in the very center of a mountain lake. An old monk and a little boy. For two - one Buddha, one boat, several mats, a mortar for medicinal herbs, which the boy collects on the shore of the lake. The boy is just learning to distinguish healing inflorescences from poisonous ones, and good deeds from bad pranks. The monk knows everything in advance. He understands that summer will come after spring, the boy will turn into a young man and will not be able to restrain his feelings. Although he warns the mature student about this, he knows that he will still not listen to his words and will choose his own path. In the fall, when the student returns, having committed the irreparable, the monk will teach him humility and show him the way to leave and be reborn into a snake - very similar to the one that the boy once tortured during his cruel fun. And in the winter the student will return to take the place of his mentor and take responsibility for another little boy.
Kim Ki-Duk's film, consisting of five parts - five seasons, inevitably replacing each other - is poorly suited for detailed analysis. Like any worthy parable, it is self-sufficient and does not require additional explanation - there is nothing in the film other than what is clearly shown on the screen. One can, of course, consider what is happening from the point of view of Buddhism and point out that the image of the monk refers to the traditional type of bodhisattva-boatman widespread in the Korean religious tradition of Mahayana, who prefers the liberation of other living beings from a continuous series of suffering and rebirth to his own achievement of nirvana. But doing this is completely optional. You can just watch the film and understand everything without words in the cycle of eternal return. And if you were to write a review of it, then only, like a student, clenching a knife stained with someone else’s blood in your fist, cutting off layer by layer of pliable, soaked wood, on top of a draft carefully written out by the teacher with the help of the tail of a completely alive, rumbling and struggling cat.
The student carves the Prajya-Paramitka Sutra, which helps to perceive reality as it is and to comprehend perfection in it, which allows one to break out of the chain of samsara. It seems that this is the same sutra for Kim Ki-Duk himself, his ninth film, which mystically accurately illustrates the director’s entire creative path. The first part, "Spring", where a boy, laughing loudly, torments small animals, is a reference to the first radical films of this director - "Crocodile", "Wild Animals", "The Birdcage". “Summer,” a time of love that gives rise to obsession, which leads to aggression and explodes the meditative mood with Kim’s usual eroticism, is, of course, a reflection of the sensual and shocking films about true love - “The Island” and “Bad Guy.” “Autumn,” the result of the violence that broke out, refers to the cruel and wise “Real Fiction,” to reality as it is and as it is shown in the films “Address Unknown” and “Coast Guard.” And finally, “Winter” is the very moment in which Kim Ki-Duk, in his own words, finds himself today (it is no coincidence that he himself played an aging student climbing to the top of a mountain with a heavy stone tied to his belt). What will happen to him next spring, where samsara will take him, is unknown. So far, on the way to "Spring...", which has already received awards and applause at festivals in Locarno, San Sebastian, Toronto and Moscow, is the Oscar test: the film "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring" "was nominated by Korea for the American Film Academy Award in the category "Best Foreign Language Film". Although, of course, it is difficult to call a picture in which people communicate in a language understandable to any creature in the world “foreign language”.
PS Simultaneously with “Spring...”, Kim Ki-Duk’s penultimate film, the above-mentioned “Coast Guard,” is also being released in Russia. Read about it in the upcoming issues of the newspaper. Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY |
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