The movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” starts with showing a small Buddhist temple on the river. In the temple, there were both old and young Buddhist monks. Leafy trees and clear spring weather evoke peaceful background of this movie. To gather medical herbs and to get into land, two monks have to take a small boat. A young monk teases small animals like frogs, snakes, and fish by suspending stones to them with his innocent smile; at the same time, the old monk observes young monk without any comments. That night an old monk suspends rock to young monk as he did to small animals (Chung 111). Throughout seeing the death of small animals, young monk regrets of what he did to animals. As time passes, the summer comes, and a young monk grows up into teenager. At this point, a girl of the similar to the young monk’s age, suffering from disease, comes to the temple to convalesce. Young monk falls in love with that girl and indulges in a sexual desire. The old monk recognizes their puppy love; therefore, sends the girl to a secular society. In this scene, young monk leaves the temple to find his love and the summer scene ends.
In a while, during the autumn times, the young monk comes back to the temple to hide from investigation after he killed his love. He tries to commit suicide in front of the statue of Buddha, because he cannot control his anger for being cheated by the beloved woman. An old monk saves a young monk from death and makes him carve Buddhist scripts on the floor. However, after young monk gets arrested, the old monk is left alone and dies. In the scene of winter, a young monk comes back to the almost ruined temple. He has got a proper training by learning martial arts and studying Buddhist scripts. One night, a woman with a face covered with scarf visits the temple and leaves her child in the vicinity. That night she commits suicide by jumping into the hole in a frozen river. After that scene, the young monk, who is getting older, climbs up the mountain carrying a heavy rock on his back and moving the statue of Buddha. The spring has come again. Old monk, who used to be the young monk, and a grownup child stay peaceful in the temple. Young monk irritates small animals just like as old monk did in his youth.
The movie “My Sassy Girl” is a romantic and comedic movie about a love story. Gyeon-woo is a principal boy of this movie. He is a normal college student of South Korea. The interesting thing is that “My Sassy Girl” says nothing about the girl’s name. She is only called the Girl in this movie. The movie shows their love story separated into the first half, the second half and an extra time like in soccer. In the first half, Gyeon-woo meets the girl in a subway station. Their fateful love story begins with Gyeon-woo saving the drunken girl’s life and helping her. Gyeon-woo does not know anything about the girl but helps her just for her appearance, which is Gyeon-woo’ style. Actually, she is suffering from the recent passing away of her ex-boyfriend. She has a dream of becoming a screenwriter. The majority of scenarios are about people who come from the future and affect the present. Indeed, she trains Gyeon-woo when they go out together. She is a violent and naïve person. She keeps hitting Gyeon-woo and if he did not do what she said, she would frequently repeat: “Do you want die?”
In the second half the story keeps going the same pattern as first half although the second half focuses on the story of why Gyeon-woo and the girl have to be separated. The girl’s house condition is relatively better than that of Gyeon-woo’s and the girl’s parents force her not to meet Gyeon-woo. Moreover, the girl cannot forget her ex-boyfriend even during her meetings with Gyeon-woo. Therefore, she concludes to leave him for a while. They finally leave each other promising to meet two years later. They also buried a time capsule, which contains their letters to each other. The extra time scene takes place two years later. Gyeon-woo goes to place where she promised to meet him two years ago, but she does not come on time. By reading a letter from her, Gyeon-woo realizes that sort of her exaggerating attitudes and attempts to get the deceased ex-boyfriend’s image from Gyeon-woo during the trainings. It just so happened that her deceased ex-boyfriend is Gyeon-woo’s cousin. So Gyeon-woo’s aunt, the ex-boyfriend’s mother, introduces Gyeon-woo to the girl. This movie ends with this destined blind date.
One of the striking factors observed from two movies is the separation of time in narrative stories. To be more specific, the movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” is separated by seasons and it shows its story as a consequent change of seasons. By these season changings the director shows the audience not only process of incidents but also probability of this story. In addition, “My Sassy Girl” also uses time separation by the means in which soccer was used. In the first and the second half, the movie “My Sassy Girl” describes a destined situation of a man and woman where time is also used as a medium to going back to the past and going to the future. Both movies have the love story motifs in common. The movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” somewhat lacks the romantic factors in comparison to those in “My Sassy Girl”, however, both movies’ girls, whose names are unknown, take important roles to cause love affairs. In terms of retrospection, both movies describe sequences of male main characters to the audience. It was helpful to understand them in order to predict events yet to happen. Young monk was restrained since childhood and his flame of desire finally exploded. Gyeon-woo was raised as a girl because his parents wanted to have a daughter. He also is estimated as smart by his parents so he finally becomes a college student without dreams, which shows really passive attitudes towards life. These factors inevitably caused a meeting with the girl who is relatively tough and has masculine aspects. Another common thing is the emergence of old men, however their roles are totally different. An old monk prohibits the young monk to to fall in love with girl who suffered from illness. On the other hand, an old man gives explanation of one year, which the girl was late in the very last scene of “My Sassy Girl”. Old man’s explanation lets the girl know what happened in the last one year and what feelings Gyeon-woo’s had for her.
The movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” corresponds more to orientalism movie rather than melodrama even despite its melodramatic factors. Orientalism has to be carefully used. It stands for the tendency of finding eastern factors in western culture. However, it could be misinterpreted to racism or prejudice between ethnicities. The movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” uses seasonal medium to present life cycles of human beings (Chung 107). Experts estimate the movie as a western movie rather than eastern. Moreover, the presence of Buddhism is not for religious matter but for showing the audience cultural factors of South Korea (Chung 108). Despite its religious aspects the movie is not about religious but about the human life. One of the most interesting things in “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” is its director Kim Ki-Duk. In this movie, he plays a role of the aged monk in the scenes of Winter and the last Spring. It is more realistic and helpful to understand an intention of the director.
“My Sassy Girl” is a comedic melodrama. Considering the South Korean society, “My Sassy Girl” is a new try to break away from old prejudices of women by mocking traditional gender. Comedy movie is not just for making people laugh but also for reflecting social interests (Rowe 45). Women are relatively restricted by the South Korean society affected by Confucianism. The girl in “My Sassy Girl” tries to reveal a more masculine behavior and speech for concealing her pathetic history. The manner of displaying romantic comedy is sometimes followed by specific patterns. For instance, what kinds of occasions occur when a young man falls in love with a young woman? (Rowe 47). Simply, Gyeon-woo is an ideal type of women in real life. Even though he was not rich or handsome, he always did something that girl wants to do or wants to be. Moreover, he wants to help to reshape the girl’s broken heart. Actually, “My Sassy Girl” goes along with Gyeon-woo’s narration. He adds a comment or description of the story to help audience. During the movie, Gyeon-woo does not show up his the sexual desire to the girl even when they went to motel two times. This is a very clear difference in comparison to any other romantic comedy because sex is one of the factors that make story go along (Rowe 47).
In the movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring”, the aged young monk comes back to temple after murdering his beloved. When he recalls his love cheating on him, he is getting mad and wants to kill himself. When he was young, he fell in love with her, who came to the temple for curing the illness. Finally, she is the reason of the young monk deciding to leave the temple where he spent his youth. In here, memorization of the past shows validity of young monk’s anger. Moreover, the memory of irritating small animals in his youth affects his decision to climb up the mountain with a hard rock. It is a process of self-reflection and self-training which monks do. He calmly sits down on top of the mountain and closes his eyes. He seems like disciplining his mind and body (Chung 114). From this scene, he regrets for distressing small animals and letting them die as his dead master told him.
Actually, the girl in “My Sassy Girl” used memorization as well. She was hurt by the old love. Gyeon-woo just knew that her pain was due to breaking up with her lover, however, it was not just a break up, her lover was dead. The first day that Gyeon-woo and the girl met was the first anniversary of her deceased lover. The girl met with her deceased lover in the train, same as with Gyeon-woo. Her ex-boyfriend did everything she wants as Gyeon-woo did. Memorization shows why the girl is too sassy and has masculine characteristics. She imposed on Gyeon-woo the behavior her deceased lover did to her. She tried to find deceased lover’s image in Gyeon-woo. In here, memorization has been utilized for showing cause of the girl’s pain and reason of her behavior.
The movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring” obviously gives the audience a moral lesson that can occur in a human-life cycle. It is a wrong way to consider this movie religious although it seems more identical to the lessons of Buddha. There is a Rebirth Thought in Buddhism. It is related to the cycle of life suffering. Rebirth Thought does not stop or pause in this generation, it will be connected to further generations of human’s karma. It means somebody’s fault of the present can affect the future or suffering in the present due to the past faults. The movie shows a cycle of the season changes. A new young monk repeats the wrong attitude of a young monk. In addition, the aged monk would observe those behaviors of a new young monk as his master did in previous Spring. He would also give a new young monk a lesson what he learned from his master. The movie also showed the different life episodes of people getting aged using different stages of the year (Chung 107). This movie wants to say about self-reflection throughout showing repeated mistakes of human beings.
On the other hand, the movie “My Sassy Girl” wants to inform the audience about necessity of the destiny for love. The moral lesson from this movie can be summarized by Gyeon-woo’s monologue of the very last scene. He says: “I meet the girl again, is it too coincidental? Coincidence is a bridge for a strenuous worker built by destiny.” Both Gyeon-woo and the girl desire to meet a beloved person by destiny. When being separated, they do their best for each other. During the time without girl, Gyeon-woo becomes a screenwriter, which was a dream job of the girl. He wanted the girl’s parents to allow him to date her, therefore got a new job. He is no more a dreaming college student. Old man in “My Sassy Girl” also says “Coincidence is a bridge for a strenuous worker built by destiny”. The old man also says a story that tree is changing. The old tree is dead and the new tree is planted. This shows the girl’s mind that the old tree stands for the ex-boyfriend and the new tree stands for the Gyeon-woo. The girl finally moves on by throwing necklace, a present from ex-boyfriend, to the river. The destined love needs efforts, then destiny will come to person with coincidences.
Work Cited
Chung, Hye Seung. "Beyond "Extreme": Rereading Kim Ki-duk's Cinema of Ressentiment." Vol. 62. The Scope of Orientalism. n.d. 2010. 104-23. Print.
Rowe, Kathleen. “Classical Hollywood Comedy.” Comedy, Melodrama and Gender: Theorizing the Genres of Laughter. n.d. 1995. 39-59. Print.
