Product Description

From the award-winning Korean writer/director/editor Kim K-Duk comes this critifcally acclaimed and exquisitely beautiful story of a young Buddhist monk's evolution from innocence to Love, Evil to Enlightenment and ultimately to Rebirth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16756 in DVD
• Color: Color
• Brand: OH,YEONG-SU
• Released on: 2004-09-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Korean
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dimensions: .24 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com
Working miracles with only a single set and a handful of characters, Korean director Kim Ki-Duk creates a wise little gem of a movie. As the title suggests, the action takes place in five distinct episodes, but sometimes many years separate the seasons. The setting is a floating monastery in a pristine mountain lake, where an elderly monk teaches a boy the lessons of life--although when the boy grows to manhood, he inevitably must learn a few hard lessons for himself. By the time the story reaches its final sections, you realize you have witnessed the arc of existence--not one person's life, but everyone's. It's as enchanting as a Buddhist fable, but it's not precious; Kim (maker of the notorious The Isle) consistently surprises you with a sex scene or an explosion of black comedy; he also vividly acts in the Winter segment, when the lake around the monastery eerily freezes. --Robert Horton

From The New Yorker
A Buddhist monk (Oh Young-soo) and his disciple, a young boy, live in an enchanted setting-a temple set at the center of a very still lake high in the mountains of Korea. The boy grows up, makes mistakes, and receives punishments from his master, but all is calm and orderly until a young woman enters the scene-a disruption that leads to violence and, eventually, to renewal. Kim Ki-duk's movie has a formal grace that is nearly intoxicating: the cinematography revels in the exquisite quiet of the lake, with its natural abundance rendered in a palette of infinitely subtle grays and pale blues. The formal perfection makes one willing to overlook an implicitly priggish rejection of sexuality and the normal glories and temptations of the world outside. And the movie's piety is redeemed by a vagrant and rather subversive sense of humor that keeps the rituals of Buddhist discipline fresh and humanly appealing. In Korean. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker