'Spring, Summer' delivers a welcome serenity

The seasons follow each other like flowing notes of music in South Korean writer/director Kim Ki-duk's beautiful, meditative drama "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring." Set in a tiny monastery raft floating on a tree-rimmed lake, the film unfolds in five parts, each corresponding to a season and separated by many years. At the end of the "Summer" segment, you can feel the chill in the air as a breeze signals the transition; the golden leaves shown in "Fall" are like a memory of the previous season's sun.

Nature's cycle mirrors life's cycle in this quiet film, which begins with a pair of monks — one middle-aged, one a child — and ends with another pair, decades later.

We see the child learning lessons from nature: Animals die, as a consequence of his actions (he's tied rocks to them, for fun), and tears are shed, as the wiser monk (Oh Young-soo) watches. (Throughout the film, animals play a key role; coexisting with the human characters and acting as mute teachers. A cat, at one point, lends its tail for a writing instrument; a turtle becomes a symbol of life's progress.)

Movie review Showtimes ***½ "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring," with Oh Young-soo, Seo Jae-kyung, Ha Yeo-jin, Kim Young-min, Kim Ki-duk. Written and directed by Kim Ki-duk. 103 minutes. Rated R for some strong sexuality. In Korean with English subtitles. Seven Gables, Uptown.

Later, when that child has become a young man (played by Seo Jae-kyung), he learns a different kind of lesson. He becomes obsessed with a frail, pale young woman (Ha Yeo-jin) who has come to the monastery with her mother so that they may pray for her health. (The clothing worn by these women is our first hint, well into the film, that this seemingly timeless story is contemporary.) The two experience a wistful, sun-warmed love affair, complete with needy, almost frantic sex on the rocks that edge the lake. When she and her mother leave, the young monk is devastated; in his own change of season, he leaves the monastery as well.

More seasons pass, and more changes come to the tranquil raft: tragedy, death, and a new cycle of life beginning as a softly pink-flowered spring returns. Ki-duk (who appears in the film's penultimate act as the formerly young monk returning again) gives it all a serene pace that has a feeling of inevitability to it; unlike many movies, this one feels completely organic, as if there's no other way it could play out but this.

The beautiful cinematography by Baek Dong-hyun, all filmed in a 200-year-old artificial lake in Kyungsang Province in North Korea, adds to the hypnotic mood. After seeing this film, you have to shake yourself a bit before going back out onto the street, so perfectly was this quiet world created, with its haunting theme of seasonal renewal and rebirth. In one scene, we watch the old monk as he writes something with a water-dipped brush. The intricate characters, painted on a warm plank, dry in the sun, fading to nothingness, leaving room to begin again.

Moira Macdonald: mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.