Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring

This exquisitely-photographed modern Buddhist fable may have snowed some critics with its exotic “wisdom,” but remains a nice balance of cinematic simplicity with visual spectacle. Kim Ki-Duk’s film is set on an isolated mountain lake in Korea, around a tiny floating monastery. The cycle of the seasons is coordinated with the cycles of a man’s life, first as a young boy under the austere tutelage of a solitary monk, then as the teenage lover of a young girl who just happens to row out to the monastery, then a grown man returning in disgrace from the world, and finally a monk himself who undergoes training and an ordeal of expiation, only to find himself on the raft taking in a young boy much like himself. Meditative, witty, and oh-so-beautiful, the film may not require a suspension of disbelief to submit to its slow charm, but its rigor is more apparent than real. (2004, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-85, RT-94.)