Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk- 2003)

Written & Directed by Kim-Ki-Duk

Starring Su Oh-yeong, Kim Young-min, Seo Jae-kyung, Kim Jong-ho, Ha Yeo-jin and Kim Ki-Duk

Spring, Summer, Fall Winter and Spring is one of the most hauntingly beautiful films I have encountered in recent years. I haven't seen any of Ki-Duk's other films, but I do feel that this is his most popular film outside his country. At least in India, he seems to have some sort of a cult following among cinephiles. From what I have read about him, this film seems to be a drastic change in style from the director's previous works.

The film is set in a Buddhist monastery floating atop a lake, separated from the 'world of men' as the senior monk calls it, and has to do with his relationship with his disciple through various stages of the young monk's life. The film is neatly divided into five chapters, each of them titled after each season, as the film's title indicates. In each of these chapters, the young monk has a hard lesson to learn.

The first chapter (Spring) shows  a boy monk who finds delight in tying animals to a stone, affecting their mobility. The senior monk sees this and plays a small trick to make the boy aware of his sadistic tendencies. In the second chapter (Summer), we jump forward in time, where the boy monk has grown into an adolescent and when a woman brings her your daughter to the senior monk to revive her from her state of depression, the adolescent monk is fascinated with her. The following series of events leads to the young monk leaving the monastery.

In chapter three (Fall), several years have gone by again, and the young monk, who left the monastery when he was an adolescent, has now returned as a 30-year old man, disillusioned by the ways of the world and convicted for a grievous crime. It is not long before the police arrive at the monastery in his trail. But before they can take him away, the convict has to finish a task assigned to him by the senior monk. Once the task is finished and the police leave with the monk, the senior monk, realising his time has come to leave the world, burns himself in a suicide ritual.

In Chapter Four (Winter), the monk, who was last seen deported by the police, is back at the now desolate monastery, which now stands on top of a layer of ice. He revives the monastery, which has been desolate for several years and engages himself in spiritual practices. One day a woman visits him with a child in her arms. She abandons the child at the monastery and while leaving, the ice cracks and she drowns in the ice-cold water. Chapter five begins with Spring, where the monk is seen tutoring the abandoned boy. The cycle has begun all over again.

The film makes sparse use of dialogue, the visuals telling us much of the story. Coming to visuals, the camerawork in the film is quite austere, very much in keeping with the contemplative spirit of the story. Ki-Duk is able to convey the story through minimal camera movement; the film gains much of its power from its seamless transition from shot-to-shot. The music in the film is for the most part Western, which a New York Times reviewer wrote was better suited to the sinking of the Titanic than to this fable. But since it is used with restraint, it is not that off-putting as it might have been.

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi- 2011)

Written, Produced and Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Cinematography- Mahmoud Kalari
Editing- Hayedeh Safyari
Music- Sattar Oraki
Cast- Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi
Country/Language- Iran/Persian

A Separation opens with a married couple, Nader (Peyman Mooadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami), at court, applying for divorce. Simin wants to go abroad to make a better living, but Nader is unwilling since he has to tend to his father, who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s, hence Simin wants a divorce. The judge finds Simin's grounds baseless and refuses to grant them a divorce. They have, however, decided to live separately and their 11 year old daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), will stay with her father.

So that his father will be taken care of while he is out to work, Nader arranges for a home nurse, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). But two days after she has been hired, Nader arrives home one evening to find his father tied to a bed and the nurse missing. Her arrival five minutes later sparks off an argument and Nader spurns her out. The next day he hears that she has had a miscarriage. More troublesome than anything else, even a potential prison term, for Nader, is handling Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) the nurse’s ill-tempered husband. As it turns out, A Separation is about a lot more than the divorce of the estranged couple.

As one can expect, there is enough potential for dramatic suspense in the plot. But Farhadi takes it a step further. The film falls in line with most Iranian masterpieces by staying clear of a protagonist or antagonist. Like Jean Renoir as Octave in his masterpiece The Rules of the Game says “Everyone has his reasons”, every character in the film, right from Termeh, to Hodjat, have reasons for being the way they are.

The very first scene, where Nader and Simin sit facing the camera and voice their concerns to the offscreen judge prefigures the fact that the film leaves a lot to the judgement of the audience. When I use the word "suspense" to describe this film, I don’t mean suspense as what is normally seen in the cheap thrillers churned out by Hollywood. As with most Iranian movies, dramatic suspense in A Separation has to do with the psychological tensions prevailing in its characters. Farhadi also goes a step forward, weaving in issues that are taboo in Iranian society.

One of them is the class divide, which is portrayed overtly when Nader and Hodjat face each other. The other somewhat subtle but more controversial issue is the way religious dogma interferes with basic humanity (Razieh, for instance, wants to help the ailing father remove his trousers that he has just wet, but is worried she may commit a sin if she does so).

A Separation contains some of the cleverest bits of editing I have seen recently. Elaborating on it is impossible, since it contains spoilers. The cleverness of the cut lies in the fact that the audience is made aware of its abruptness in such a way, it can be recalled even towards the end of the film.

The camerawork in the film is very documentary-like, in its use of handheld camera movements, naturalistic lighting and real locations. This naturalism extends to the acting, so much that you forget you are watching a film. While the camerawork is typical of Iranian movies, the acting is in contrast to that in other films, where the performances are rather subdued.

If Simin’s rather baseless grounds for applying for a divorce lead you into considering her as the antagonist, the focus is bound to change once Nader finds his ailing father tied to the bed. And if Razieh's hot-headed and continually abusive husband makes a strong case for the antagonist, one realises that he too is a victim of his own circumstances. In the end, there are no heroes or villains, only flawed human beings trapped in absurd twists of fate.