Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
An isolated lake, where an old monk lives in a small floating temple. The monk has a young boy living with him, learning to become a monk. We watch as seasons and years pass by.
Kim Ki-duk's cyclical meditation on life, sin, and spiritual growth is cinematically extraordinary — the floating temple on the pristine mountain lake, framed with austere, painterly precision, is among the most visually distinctive settings in world cinema. The film's novelty is genuinely high: its structure as five seasonal chapters spanning a lifetime, with virtually no dialogue and a single location anchoring cosmic themes, is unmistakably singular. Cinematography earns a 4 for the breathtaking natural photography and rigorous compositional discipline. Plot and acting are harder to separate from the film's deliberately sparse, parable-like mode — the narrative is intentional minimalism rather than deep characterization, keeping both at above-average rather than exceptional. The ending, while thematically resonant in completing the cycle, feels somewhat predetermined by the film's own structure, making it beautiful but not surprising.