Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring

What a pile of self-indulgent gibberish this film is. I'm all in favour of films which offer a more considered and thoughtful style of storytelling than the normal Hollywood fare, but 'Spring, Summer...' takes it too far.

The film follows the life of a boy, then a man, then an old man, who grows up on a Buddhist temple on an island in the middle of an isolated lake. His master catches him tormenting animals by strapping rocks to their backs, he tells him that he must go and untie the animals, and that if they die he will carry the stone in his heart for the rest of his life. Behold the METAPHOR!

So anyway, the animals die and he goes on to have a troubled experience brought on by falling in love and leaving the temple - all against the advice of his Buddhist mentor. I guess this is some kind of poetic justice for his tormenting of the animals; fair enough, but why does such an obvious and un-revolutionary plot require 100 minutes of film?

I don't want to trample over the film too much, as the scenery is really pretty and all beautifully shot. My problem with this kind of film making is that it belongs in an art gallery rather than on DVD. I'm disappointed now that I made such a fuss to LoveFilm about them sending me this film again when the first DVD they sent me was broken. If I'd known it'd be like this I'd have skipped over it and thanked them for saving my time.