Pourquoi Bodhi-Dharma est-il parti vers l'orient?

Yong-Kyun Bae is an art professor at a university in Korea. "Dharma" was virtually a solo effort by him and it took ten years to complete. The movie has little plot to speak of, and consists of a series of images, a slide show of moving images about a man's path to Enlightenment. They are strikingly beautiful and force the viewer to contemplate one's own life and existence. On the surface, all of the images are serene but underneath them lie deep power and a palpable spiritual yearning. As one reviewer aptly put it, "This movie is not about Zen, it is Zen."

Bae has made a second movie which was released in 1997. It is also very contemplative but unfortunately is nearly incomprehensible.

The first time I rented this movie, I saw it with a friend. We quit halfway through after groaning with boredom, then spent the rest of the evening making fun of it. A year later I tried it again, and have seen it five times since. It is extraordinary and is more gripping and absorbing each time I watch it.

There is of course no plot, only a loose story which illustrates, both in its whole and many fragmentary parts, core questions and ideas of Buddhism regarding the impermanence of all things and the corrupting nature of human desire. I know only a little about Buddhism, but what little I had read since the first unsuccessful viewing was probably what helped me see it subsequent times. Like Buddhism, it employs profound calm to upset some fundamental attitudes about the world and makes these disturbances fascinating: suffering, loss, the desire to hold on to things, and the vanity of intellectual growth.

This is however not by any stretch an "ideas" movie. It was made by a painter and remains very much a kind of tone-poem for the screen. I recommend it highly.

A strange thing happened to me while watching this movie for the first time: About halfway thru, I lost the desire to pay attention to it. It's not that I lost interest, just that I lost the feeling of need or obligation to pay attention in order to get the most out of it.

Cinematic enlightenment? Or just fatigue?

Hmmm... probably a little of both, combined with the knowledge that it I can always watch it again.

Cinematic reincarnation!

This really is a different movie, and I can see it being played on my VCR time and time again, at times when I want to "watch something", but don't...

There's just so much to it, so much to think about, so much to see, that one time thru will only give a little sip. And I'm afraid that there are times when it does help to read the subtitles -- although much of the time there are no subtitles.

The thing about it is, rather than "teach" Buddhist philosophy, it "gives the experience". It follows its three characters on the path, and gives lessons on letting go.

There is a scene where a young boy returns to the grave of a bird he'd buried a few days before: Unable to let go of the bird, unable to accept death, he finds that yes, life goes on, but in ways that he was not ready to accept or understand! In an instant, he's startled by the cry of another bird, and falls from a ledge into a pool of water (there's a lot of water in this movie), where he thrashes about like he's drowning -- and then he stops trying to swim, and simply allows himself to float. Get it?

Lots of eye candy, lots of mind candy. If you're a Buddhist, or in any way interested in Buddhism, you must not miss it for anything! If however you're not interested in the least about Buddhist philosophy, but ARE interested in cinematic excellence, see it. It's a masterpiece!

I first saw this movie back in 1990, being played in Switzerland. to understand and appreciate this movie, you need to face the fact that western and eastern story-telling differ a lot. And since Bodhi-Dharma, who never appears in the picture, is the first patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism in China, meditation is not only a subject of the movie but also became an inspiration for the makers. The story is therefore told in an extremely slow manner, including several flashbacks. It's a perfect introduction to Zen, but also a relaxing and beautiful movie to enjoy alone.

Now the words "Korean art film from the 80s" should be enough to get film snobs and Asian cinema fans to watch this film. And how many films are about monastics, to boot? I agree with the reviewers who say this film is slow and incomprehensible. The Korean art professor who made this seemed more interested in making a pseudo-profound art film than an actual good film. The Zen koan-like utterings from the monks seem just a bit cliched. There was even a monastery cat in the window sill. Does it get any better than that?

Art films, especially foreign ones, will get a lot of rave reviews from critics and audiences alike for simply being pretentious and artsy. New York Times raved about this way back in 1993. Actually, this reminds me of Ponette (1994) - another very slow-moving, boring foreign film from around that time.

Still, I give 5 stars for some beautiful cinematography, hot actor (why doesn't he have any other credits besides this film?), and the unique subject matter. The hot actor looks like Sang Woo Kim, the British Korean model/artist on Instagram.

I watched this streamed on YouTube, but had a really hard time following and keeping interested. Maybe it's better if you watch it in a theater. This is a very little-known film from the 80s, but I can see art film houses screening this these days. This reminds me of a more recent monastery film, Into Great Silence (2005), a German documentary that followed around Carthusian monks in a French monastery. That documentary had no narrative, just silent, and just followed the monks about their lives.

Anyway, this is a decent film to attempt watching (good luck) if you want to add to your tiny arsenal of monastery films. You'll learn about Korean stuff you probably didn't know about, like the purple rice (black rice added to white, turns it purple).