Koan de printemps

Life is often about learning, and learning is often about journeys: the decision to set out on them, and the readiness to profit from the encounters on the way. Those encounters are not just with other sociable human beings: they are with the tree and the snow, the bandits and the birds, the sun and the silence. Koan de printemps (in English: Koan of Spring) is a beautiful film with its own poetry derived from Asian spirituality and the flowing motion of Sino-Viet martial arts: it tells us to look and appreciate, feel and absorb, know well and proceed. The more you do it, the more open your mind is, the more you can be generous, secure and ready: for a sword or for a flower, for every destiny that befalls you. For though you may not know what shall befall you, you will know yourself, through everything else outside you. And isn't that everything, to be able to fulfill yourself, profiting from every richness given externally to you but with the corresponding fibre in you so as to notice it and appreciate it?

Lovingly shot in Vietnam and France (though the film is set in Vietnam), with shots of beauty enhanced through special effects (not something amiss in this film), the film has by and large able actors and a lovely silence interspersed with wit and humour at times. The music of the film is also a treat, as are the martial arts on display.

For the Zen concept of koan, a quick read is here.