Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. . . Spring may have shot onto my top ten films of all time in record time, and of all places to have come from - Korea! I traditionally have not been a huge fan of Korean films, but in the past few years I've been surprised by the quality of film-making coming out of Korea. Not that I have a top ten films of all time. And not that one of the criteria for being on my top ten films of all time wouldn't be standing the test of time. So saying a film that I've only seen once, and saw today, is on my list of top ten films of all time can't mean a whole lot.

The subject matter renders me biased, though, so I might have to be careful to whom I recommended the film. The film is highly allegorical/metaphorical, and set in a monastery that floats in the middle of a lake in the mountains of Korea. And at any given time, there are no more than two monks there.

This is probably a bold thing to say, and maybe wrong, fine, but out of all the films I've seen with Buddhism as a theme or influence, this film really gets to the heart of Buddhism from a human perspective more than any other. It doesn't preach, and there's no holier than thou moralism. Despite being set at a monastery and having monks as the main characters, it's about human fault, and the religious path entails a lot of tripping up. And the trip ups are part of the path. I think the film itself is pretty bold in having the monastery floating in the middle of a lake without any foundation. As soon as you think of the search as something concrete, something to build upon, something tangible, you've missed the mark. It is only concrete in the ephemerality of death when the lake is frozen over.

I'm reading into the religion because of my bias. As a film, it is beautifully shot, wonderfully conceived, and emotionally rich. I'm a sucker for seasons being used as an organizational device for a life metaphor. Or separate stories used metaphorically for different stages of life. "Robot Stories" sort of did that. I thought "Three Step Dancing" did that. There's a Vietnamese film called "Three Seasons" which I need to see again which also, obviously, uses the seasons as metaphor. "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...Spring" does raise questions that don't get answered, which may be annoying to some (the "what the hell" factor), but since so much is not to be taken literally or is meant to represent more, it's easy to let those slide.

As for Korean film, I think they do well when they do something that neither Hong Kong nor Japan already does better. When they succeed in just getting to the heart of "something Korean" (broad range), you get good films. Same with Taiwan. If Taiwanese film-makers tried to do what Hong Kong and Japan already do well (or not), they would suck. But I think recent Taiwanese film-makers really capture "something Taiwanese" in using a very naturalist approach, and instead of forwarding a plot, they try to capture or express some emotion through an observed scene, often done in long shot. I don't know, I may be wrong. I may be reading what I want to into Taiwanese cinema.