Critic Reviews

Kim's movie conjures a sense of spiritual discipline as suspenseful as it is stunning to watch and exhilarating to contemplate.

A masterful portrait of the seasons of a life.

This meditation on spirituality, loneliness and accountability could touch your heart's core.

The triumph of ''Spring, Summer'' is that even those of us who don't happen to be Buddhists can catch a glimpse of ourselves in the spinning wheel of hope, destruction, suffering, and bliss.

An exquisitely simple movie. Mr. Kim manages to isolate something essential about human nature and at the same time, even more astonishingly, to comprehend the scope of human experience.

The film unfolds at a deliberate pace, with a soundtrack occupied less by dialogue than by the sounds of water flowing and crickets chirping. And if you listen carefully enough, you might just hear the sound of one hand clapping.

As meditative and beautiful as its title would indicate. What is a surprise is the extent to which it manages to be involving if you can put yourself on its wavelength.

Kim exalts nature--life’s passage--without stooping to sentimentality. He sees the tooth and claw, and he sees the transcendence. Whether this is a Buddhist attribute, I cannot say, but the impression this movie leaves is profound: Here is an artist who sees things whole.

This beautiful -- and beautifully controlled -- film is also an object lesson in how to hypnotize an audience.

Truly a movie for world audiences with a message that's devastatingly subtle.