PHILOSOPHY OF BUDDHISM IN NARRATION AND SYMBOLISM IN VISUALISATION OF THE FILM: SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER AND SPRING

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1 KAAV INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTS, HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES A REFEREED BLIND PEER REVIEW QUARTERLY JOURNAL KIJAHS/JUL-SEP2017/VOL-4/ISS-3/A62 PAGE NO ISSN: IMPACT FACTOR (2017) PHILOSOPHY OF BUDDHISM IN NARRATION AND SYMBOLISM IN VISUALISATION OF THE FILM: SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER AND SPRING 1 VARGHESE JOSEPH 1 Asst. Professor, Dept. of Mass Communication and Journalism, Christ Nagar College Thiruvananthapuram and pursuing PhD from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore Abstract The film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring discloses the renowned South Korean director Kim Ki Duk s affection towards Buddhism. The film portrays the story of a Buddhist monk and a boy learning to be a monk living in a small hermitage afloat on a raft in a lake and how the life cycle of the boy is associated with the five seasons. The three important principles and four fundamental teachings or four noble truths of Buddhism are represented throughout the film as the core sign. The visual elements represented in the film are symbolic and iconic. This paper will analyse how the director incorporates the philosophy of Buddhism in narration and symbolism in visualisation in the film. Key words: Philosophy, Narration, Semiotics, Visualisation, Symbolism Objectives 1. To analyse the philosophy in narration. 2. To identify the symbolism in visualisation. Research method Uwe Flick defined qualitative research as Subjective view points are a first starting point. And second string of research studies the making and course of interaction while a third seeks to reconstruct the structures of the social field and the latent meaning of practices. (An Introduction to qualitative Research, Pg: 16, 17) Through qualitative method, the content of the film is analysed to meet the objectives: The researcher had interviewed the Director Kim Ki Duk during the 2013 IFFK festival and also references of the studies helped to conduct more specific analysis Theory Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs, symbols, and signification. It is the study of how meaning is created, not what it is. The researcher applies Semiotic theory to analyse and to find out the philosophical perspective in narration and symbolism in visualisation as perceived by Charles Sanders Peirce, a semiologist and an American philosopher. According to him, sign is the smallest unit of meaning, anything that can be used to communicate. It is categorised into Symbolic signs: signs where the relation between signifier and signified is purely conventional and culturally specific, Iconic signs: signs where the signifier resembles the signified, and Indexical signs: signs where the signifier is caused by the signified. 346

2 Introduction If one of them dies, you will always carry that stone in your heart, a very prominent philosophical dialogue from the film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring discloses the renowned South Korean idiosyncratic director Kim Ki Duk s inclination towards Buddhism. The story of the film depicts about a Buddhist monk and his protégé who live in a small hermitage floating on a raft in a lake surrounded by serene pristine forest and how the life cycle of a novice Buddhist monk is associated with the five seasons. The five segmentations of the film encompass life, faith, growth, love, jealousy, hatred, cruelty, mystery, redemption and nature. A dog, a rooster, a cat, a bird, a snake, a turtle, a fish and a frog are also symbolically represented and characterised with utmost importance throughout the film. Women characters play a vital role in leading the entire story into a perfect narration with a philosophical perception and also characters in the film share a balanced and composed space throughout the five seasons. The film evolves distinctively on one of Buddhism's fundamental principles Samsara that represents the eternal life cycle: birth, life, death and rebirth consecutively Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. Gautama Siddhartha is commonly known as the Buddha enlightened or awakened and his philosophy marks on a system of doctrine and practices. The three important principles of Buddhism: Samsara, attachment and impermanence and four fundamental teachings or four noble truths of Buddhism: Suffering, cause of suffering, cessation of suffering and the path leading to cessation of suffering are exemplified throughout the film as the core sign. Three principles and four noble truths of Buddhism emphasise the philosophical ideology that anticipate enlightening mankind for the betterment of human life. Philosophy of Buddhism in Narration Spring- Samsara-Suffering The Director segments the narration of film into five chapters respectively Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. In the Spring, the first segmentation of the film the floating hermitage in the forest is occupied by an old Buddhist monk (Oh Young Soo) and a boy (Seo Jae Kyung), learning to be a monk. As the old monk rises, he wakes the boy up and begins with the traditional ceremony that usually a monk performs. He bows and prays to a figure of Buddha, and knocks on a hollow bowl that sends a comfortable resonance out into the forest. The tranquillity of the place that they dwell reflects on them and their daily routine. The old monk prepares to go to the shore and the boy accompanies him for collecting the medicinal herbs. The monk rows the boat on the rippled lake and reaches the three hundred year old tree. As they reach the shore, they start walking into the forest and come back to the hermitage with the medicinal herbs. Another day, during the daily routine the childish nature in the boy leads him to torment a fish, a frog and a snake which eventually causes their death. He ties a string on the tail of the fish and on the other end of the string, a stone. Hence the fish struggles to swim and the boy burbles with laughter. He continues the same with the frog and the snake which is watched by his master and while the boy sleeps, the master ties a big stone on his back. He finds difficulty in moving forward when he wakes up. Thereafter he asks his master to help him untie the stone. He in turn asks the boy to release the fish, the frog and the snake only after which will he be released. The boy finds the fish and the snake dead and he sobs heavily. In this segment the narration signifies the Samsara the eternal life cycle and Suffering which is one of the basic principles and teachings of Buddha. His philosophy emphasises that Samsara is driven by karma, which is a basic Buddhist theory that stands for action, work or deed. Your actions in life will determine where and how you will be reincarnated. The very popular dialogue in the film If one of them dies, you will always carry that stone in your heart, denote the Samsara precisely. The old monk teaches the boy to respect everything in the universe which is reflected in the teachings of Buddha. According to Buddha, the existence of life is suffering or Dukha : the first noble truth and it continues until the eternal life cycle breaks through liberating oneself to Nibbana It is the complete cessation of suffering, the total eradication of all forms of craving (The Buddha and his teachings, pg no:11). The director precisely narrates the meaning of Samsara and suffering throughout the complete sequence of the first part of the film, Spring. Summer-Attachment- Cause of Suffering The second chapter of the film begins with the title Summer which occurs after a few years and the boy has grown up. The daily routine continues and he walks into the forest. He sees the snakes making love, through which the director symbolises his desire rising gradually. On his way, he meets 347

3 a mother and her daughter and he takes them to the hermitage. The old monk welcomes them and enquires about their visit. The mother had come for the treatment of an unspecified disease of her daughter. The monk tells her When she finds peace in her soul, her body will return to health." The mother leaves her daughter in the hermitage.the relationship between the boy and the girl eventually develops into intimacy. The intimacy leads them to have a physical relationship and one day the old monk finds it out. He asks the girl to leave the place but the boy requests his master to stop her since he is attached to her. But the master tells him Lust awakens the desire to possess. And that awakens the intent to murder which denotes the philosophical concept of attachment and cause of suffering in Buddhism. The attachment and cause of suffering is the second principle and noble truth of Buddha. The cause of this suffering is craving or attachment (tanhā or Trishna). The Dhammapada states: From craving springs grief, from craving springs fear, For him who is wholly free from craving, there is no grief, much less fear. (V. 216) Craving is a powerful mental force latent in all, and is the chief cause of most of the ills of life. It is this craving, gross or subtle, that leads to repeated births in Samsāra and makes one cling to all forms of life. According to Buddha the attachment is a delusion that one develops in oneself and hence the desire arises from the concept of attachment which leads to the cause of suffering. At the end of the second segment of the film, the director depicts the desire of the boy in way of longing for the love of the girl which leads him to leave the hermitage and embrace the illusion of luxurious life in the world. But the girl cheats on him and he murders her from where he mislays his inner peace. Fall-Impermanence-Cessation of Suffering In the season fall, the boy is depicted as a man with rage and with the absence of inner peace. The man is imprisoned for murdering his girl. At a stage he escapes from the jail and reaches his master. The master observes the absence of divinity in him. The man tries to shut all of his senses to death for liberating himself from suffering. The old monk stops him from the attempt of suicide and makes him carve the Prajnaparamita Sutra : a set of rules defined for the perfection of wisdom on the deck of the hermitage. The monk tells him Carve out all of these characters with the knife. And while you cut each one out, drive out the anger from your heart. The dialogue incorporates the Third principle and Noble Truth of Buddha: the complete cessation of suffering which is Nibbāna, the ultimate Goal of Buddhists. It is achieved by the total eradication of all forms of craving. The director portrays the impermanence of life in the world through the character of the man. The old monk tries to make the man aware of the impermanence of the love that he clings onto. The desire of the man to live forever with his girl ended up in murdering her. It indicates the impermanence of his desire and the Monk asks him to bring out the tranquillity in him by carving the Sutra. Henceforth the inner peace will liberate him from all suffering. At the end of carving the Sutra, the man realises the impermanence and he leaves the hermitage with the police officers by abiding the law. Thereafter, the old monk, observing his change of attitude, prepares a pyre funeral for himself on the row boat and shut his all senses to death. The young boy uses the shutting force for inner maturity whereas the old monk does it for liberation. Winter- Path to the cessation of suffering In the fourth segment of the film, the man returns to the hermitage from the prison after his punishment, which was played by the director himself in the film. The lake is frozen and the mature adult monk picks up where he left off so many years ago in his training. He finds the different forms of meditation and he practices a meditational martial art on the ice to make sure his mind and body are fit. A woman who has covered her face with a purple cloth arrives at the monastery with an infant. Then, after leaving her child behind, she falls through a hole in the ice and drowns. The adult monk takes care of the boy. He takes out a statue of Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, then attaches a millstone to his body with a rope and drags it on the top of a mountain. The teachings of Buddha accentuates: the Nibbāna is to be comprehended by the mental eye by renouncing all internal attachment to the external world. This Truth has to be realized by developing the Noble Eightfold Path which is the Fourth Noble Truth of Buddha. The path to the cessation of suffering, the "eightfold path" encompasses right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. In the fourth part of the film, the director showcases the adult monk suffering himself by carrying the millstone to the top which symbolises the renunciation of internal attachment to the external world. The adult monk realises his deeds in the past will determine his reincarnation and so he takes the suffering himself. By attaching the millstone to his 348

4 body and carrying Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion on the top of the mountain signifies the adult monk embracing the Eight fold path into his mind and heart. It leads him to the complete spiritual life where he finds the path to the cessation of suffering. Buddhism characteristically describes reality in terms of process and relation rather than entity or substance. The director is very successful in narrating the spiritual teachings of compassion, suffering, loss, desire, attachment, and transformation in the film.he depicts the ordinary human nature and portrays the path which would lead to the perfect human life in the philosophical perspective of Buddhism. In the fifth part of the film, the adult monk takes care of the abandoned child and starts teaching him the teachings of Buddha which resembles the way he was learning to be a monk under the guardianship of the old monk. It indicates the rebirth philosophy of the teachings of Buddha. Symbolism in Visualisation The film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring marked an international acclaim to the director Kim Ki Duk and his symbolic visualisation mesmerises the audience as well as the upcoming young directors around the world. Most of his films focus on symbolic visual elements rather than the conversational visualisation and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring proves at its core.in the film, the beginning shot narrates a huge door opening and welcoming the viewers into a beautiful and traditional hermitage floating on a small raft in a lake in the forest. On the left and right side of the front door, the demonic human figures are painted, which signify the complete protection from the evil spirits and on both sides of the back door, the angelic welcoming figures are drawn, which denote the world of positive spirit. All throughout the film, the director portrays the lotus which represents the purity and enlightenment in Buddhism. On the door and the inside wall of monastery, on the inside and outside of the raw boat, the paintings of lotus fill the space with utmost importance since the lotus is an inevitable element in Buddhism. The lotus form of meditation is also one of the practices of Buddhism. The main core concept of the film conveys the path of achieving purity and enlightenment in humans and the lotus represents the meaning in all the segments of film. The paintings of dragon in the hermitage stand out in the film which is used in first season spring. The dragon symbolises creativity and positive energy in Buddhism.They are shape shifters, able to transform at will, from as small as the silkworm to a giant that fills the entire sky. Traditionally the dragons are painted with two colours, green or brown. The green or azure dragon of Buddhism ascends into the sky at the spring equinox; it represents the light's increasing power in springtime and the easterly direction of the sunrise. In the film, during spring season, the old monk knocks with two sticks on a hanging dragon painted with green and brown colours as part of the ritual performance of Buddhism. The director visualises the resemblance of the positive energy in the film and the visual element of knocking on the dragon shot supports the entire concept of the spring segment. The visuals of a pair of golden fish often become the part of narration in the film and it is shown in the second scene of the film for the first time. The golden fish represents the freedom and happiness in Buddhism. The director intentionally includes the visuals of golden fish residing beneath the statue of Buddha since he wants to bring out the happiness and freedom of spiritual life in human, so the visuals of golden fish symbolises the real happiness and freedom of spiritual life in the film. The spiritual life always focuses on achieving the eternal life and the impermanence is symbolically visualised through the floating monastery on a lake. The floating hermitage symbolises the impermanence of the life. The principles of Impermanence can simply mean reality. Everything that we do and feel is in constant change. A person may feel empty at one moment and overtime that feeling goes away and is replaced with a different set of emotions which is precisely explained throughout the film As part of the visual narration, the director precisely accentuates the animals like a dog, a rooster, a cat and a snake in each season respectively. The dog in the first season, spring, represents loyalty and obedience, through which the director brings out the presence of qualities between the master and his disciple. The rooster in summer symbolises desire from the perspective of Buddhism. When the boy leaves the monastery, he takes the rooster and the statue of Buddha with him. The rooster denotes that he carries the desire longing for love and at the same time the statue of Buddha indicates the burden of his master s teachings. In the third season fall, the Old monk brings the cat to the hermitage and he uses its tail as a calligraphic brush for painting the carved Prajnaparamita Sutra. The cat signifies expelling of evil spirits in Buddhism. The visualisation of painting the Sutra using the cat s tail represents the driving out of negative energy and the rage that is observed in man. In the winter season, the director includes the snake with utmost importance and it 349

5 has a continuation from the previous season too. At the end of fall season, when the old monk kills himself, a snake crawls from near the boat to the monastery. It symbolises the liberation of soul of the old monk and it also incorporates the rebirth in the teachings of Buddha. According to Charles Sanders Peirce, one of the pioneers in the studies of Semiotics, signs can be categorised into Iconic signs: signs where the signifier resembles the signified, Symbolic signs: signs where the relation between signifier and signified is a purely conventional and culturally specific and Indexical signs: signs where the signifier is caused by the signified. Symbolic visuals in the film are almost cultural and conventional from the Buddhist perspective and director s inclination towards Buddhism led him to direct such a film. During the interview with director Kim Ki Duk in IFFK-2013, he had explained that he is also influenced by the Austrian painter Egon Schiele s works and his personal experience in life reflects in all of his films. It reflects the same in the film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. The director revealed in the interview in IFFK-2013 that the film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring did not use a script for the shooting; rather everything was scripted in his mind. And yet, the film astonishingly mesmerised the viewers and permanently marks a philosophy of Buddhism and a symbolic visual treat forever. Bibliography Christian Metz: translated by Michael Taylor, (1974) Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema: Oxford University Press. Stephen Prince, (1993) The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies, University of California Press. James Monaco, (1977) How to read a film, The world of Movies, Media and Multimedia, Oxford University Press. Brian Curtin, Semiotics and Visual Representation. Narada Mahathera, (1998) The Buddha and His Teachings, The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation Taipei, Taiwan. Narada Mahathera(Translation and Explanatory Notes) (1956) A manual of Abhidhamma being Abhidhammathma Sangaha, Buddhist Missionary Society. NyanaponikaThera, (1976) Abhidamma Studies: Researches in Buddhist Psychology, Buddhist Publication Society. Daniel M. Ingram, (2007) Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha. Prof. Dr.Y. Karunadasa, The DhammaTheory Philosophical Cornerstone of the Abhidhamma, The Wheel Publication No. 412/413. Dr.MehmTin Mon, (1995) Introducing the Higher Teachings of the Buddha, Buddha Abhidhamma: Ultimate Science. 350