Horror. Vintage noir. Dystopian scifi. Sports movies. Movies about teachers. Movies about underdogs. There are plenty of movie genres that I like fairly consistently. One very specific niche is Korean movies about monks. These are different than Korean movies about priests (Love So Divine, The Divine Fury, Thirst) which tend to focus on notions of guilt. They're also different than American movies about monks (The Golden Child, Seven Years in Tibet) but who couldn't see that coming. Yet my experience with this Korean sub-genre has proven consistently enjoyable from the high-brow Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring to the low-brow Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple. Strengthening my predisposition is Im Kwon-taek's artfilm Mandala.
A buddy pic about a nomadic ascetic (Ahn Sung-ki) and his carousing elder (Jeon Moo-song) who's been excommunicated from the brotherhood, Mandala asks plenty of questions about the meaning of life. So which monk holds the key to enlightenment? Well, if you're asking that question at the (admittedly oddball) end, you've somehow missed the point. There is no one way. Or there is one way for each one and what that one is may be one of many if there actually is a way at all. Sound too heady? Too bad for you! Slow-moving but deep-diving, this picaresque tale is filled with philosophical musings if not much of a plot.
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