The Korean movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring". Interactions between Geographical Location, Natural Surrounding and Storyline

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology - Miscellaneous, grade: A+, , course: Geography of Korea, 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Due to the task of analyzing a popular Korean movie concerning the geographic aspects involved, the movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring" directed by Ki-Duk Kim in 2003 was chosen. It is an interesting and convincing movie, also shown on international film festivals, which tells the story of the life of a Korean Buddhist monk from his early childhood to the late time of his life, as well as from his time as a novice to his own enlightenment as a master. The aim of this paper is to analyze the movie regarding geographical aspects and show the relation to the plot of the story. As this is a movie, which benefits from the impressing pictures of the nature that play a key role for the story, several aspects of geography can be displayed. As already mentioned in the title of the movie, there are five parts, which play a special role, each of them showing a different stage in the monks life and being an episode of the film. These five scenes will be analyzed individually and then all scenes will be compared in a conclusion, where also the main findings on the film and its geographic aspects will be indicated. The aspects concerning geography are predominantly the changing seasons, but there will also be some others, which will be introduced later on.