Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

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

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

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

San Francisco Chronicle by Carla Meyer

A masterful portrait of the seasons of a life.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

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.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

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.

L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas

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.

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

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.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

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

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

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

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer

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.

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Far from a maxim-expounding sermon, the film is a fresh spring of irrational visual pleasure.

Variety by Derek Elley

A sublime, witty, gritty and transcendental movie reflecting one man's life journey.

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

Kim Ki-duk keeps dialogue to a minimum and actions simple in what is virtually a two-character piece. Humor arrives organically, often resulting in hearty laughs.

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

Exquisitely crafted drama.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

It IS a little obvious, but that's the way it goes with spiritual enlightenment. The film's lessons are plain--spoken aloud, even--and deal with the close relationship between what can be shed in this life and what binds people to the world in spite of their best efforts to purify.