Are you in the mood to get away from it all? Feel like a trip somewhere. Well if you can’t really afford to an alternative is to see the new Korean film ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring’. This was a film that couldn’t be further away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. The setting is a remote and picturesque mountain lake in a South Korean wilderness preserve. It is within this setting that an elderly Buddhist monk and his protege, a young boy, live out an existence in a small wooden house on the lake. The monk teaches the boy in the ways of life, bearing in mind Buddhist teachings.

I connected strongly with this film and many scenes within it. The monk forcing the boy to be weighed down with a stone after he has cruelly tied stones to innocent animals he has been playing with in the bush. The scene when the monk finds out that his protege has been having an affair with a young woman who he has been healing, and he forces her to leave..how gutted the young man is…the lecture that the monk gives the young man about the evils of lust….the scene of the monk stoically ending his life…the scene of the young man climbing the mountain top with a buddha statue, and leaving the buddha there to watch over his home on the water

Forgive the commercial term but this film was a good package. A serene and mystical setting…an intelligent narrative…and a
exquisite orchestral soundtrack made this one of the most special and wistful offerings of the year.