閉
Shut

A tiny Buddhist temple floats in the middle of a sparkling lake. Mountains soar above the lake, dwarfing the temple and the little canoe that serves as the only means of transport from the temple to the outside world.

Sounds charming, doesn't it? As Korean film Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring) unfolds, the scene only gets more beautiful. Inside the temple lives an old monk and his little apprentice. The child's room is a mat on the floor. The room has no walls- just a door that juts up incongruously from the floor, and through which the little apprentice dutifully exits upon waking.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring isn't technically a speculative fiction film, though a few miraculous things do occur. For instance, when the little apprentice steals the canoe and ventures alone to the mainland, the old monk mysteriously appears behind him. The old monk isn't even a little wet- leaving the viewer to wonder whether he has discovered teletransportation or just learned to walk on water.

The film traces the story of the young apprentice through the seasons of his life, from innocent child, through his sexual awakening, his disastrous excursion to the outside world, and his return to the floating temple. The cinematography and acting are moving- but I was not prepared to encounter anything in this seemingly mainstream film so creepy as 閉.

閉 is the Chinese character for "shut" or "closed." This symbol has become indelibly burned into my mind. It appears twice in the course of the story- and both times the wearer has written it on scraps of paper which have been glued firmly over the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. The papers have been glued in place in an attempt to shut out the world from the five senses- and to shut off the supply of oxygen. The first time I saw a character plastered over with 閉s, I was terrified. Even my untrained Western gut reaction had no trouble identifying this very Eastern symbolic gesture as an attempt at suicide. Later in the movie, the symbols appear again. This time suffocation is not the only means by which the wearer of the 閉s attempts to achieve death.

The impact of these scenes are heightened by the fact that the film is largely unspoken. Writer/director Ki-duk Kim rarely uses dialog, relying on the actions of the actors to tell the story. This hardly means that language is unimportant to the tale. Carving the characters of a Buddhist sutra into the planks of the floating temple bring about a veritable miracle, and let us not forget the power of the word 閉.

You can see some still images of the film (including an actor pasted over with 閉) in the gallery of the film's website.