“Didn’t you know beforehand how the world of men is? Sometimes we have to let go of the things we like. What you like, others will also like.”

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring, directed by Kim Ki-duk in 2003, is a South Korean drama set on a floating Buddhist monastery in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains. The film is divided into five parts, each taking place years after the last. It opens with scenes from the life of an elderly monk who lives on the small hut on the lake. He is bringing up a toddler novice, taking him foraging in the forest and teaching him about how to respect animals. The next section is set a decade later and the arrival of a teenage girl on the island leads to the novice abandoning his master for the city. In the third section the novice returns having got into trouble with the police – the master helps the novice find peace and acceptance of his fate. In the fourth section, the novice returns having been paroled and finds the monastery deserted. He takes it on and, whilst he does so, a woman brings a baby to him as his novice. The final section brings the film full circle: the new novice is shown struggling to respect nature suggesting that the cycle of destruction and rebirth is about to recommence.

It’s a profound film: the setting of the monastery is crucial to the success of the movie and the director devotes much time to simply exploring the environment. The boat trip between the island and the shore becomes an almost hypnotic act, and it is in this liminal place on the lake that most of the important moments of the film take place: the loss of innocence of the novice, the self-immolation of the older monk, the death of the mother. All these are key events that shape the film and give it the feeling of charting lifetimes. The cinematography is beautiful, fully realising the potential of the shifting seasons and supporting the cyclical nature of the plot.

Watch in a double bill with Of Gods and Men, another monastery based drama with a similar balance between beauty and environmental harshness.