Beautifully Photographed Downer
The whole thrust of the film was that the young monk learns that just as he has placed senseless, tormenting burdens on animals, so too he has placed burdens on other sentient beings, including himself.
His pulling the stone up the mountain reiterates the stone-pulling discipline the old monk imposed on the monk as a child. It shows his own adult, mature, ultimate agreement with his Master's principle that it is wrong to torment beings, and it symbolizes his acknowledgement of guilt. But at the end of the film, the young monk's own little boy is repeating exactly the same cruelty that his father had committed as a child.
This is what makes the film a downer. It took our young monk a lifetime to learn compassion and the disavowal of power. Then, his own son hastens to duplicate his father's worst behaviors. Only this time, when the son misbehaves, unlike the case of his father (who had the old monk as mentor), the little boy does not even have the advantage of his Dad following him around to monitor and correct his misbehavior. Thus the ending scenario is even worse than its original presentation: the original monk had a guiding mentor who knew of, and corrected, his bad behavior. But, as filmed, it is clear that now the young monk's son has no one watching out for him. This is unmistakably the meaning: had he chosen, in filming the little boy's father-duplicating misadventures with innocent animals, the director could - as with the earlier scenario where the old monk monitors the young monk - easily have placed our young monk in the background, checking up on his son. The absence of adult-and/or Enlightened watchfulness and supervision in this second and final scenario is glaring and intentional. The director is clearly depicting the unfolding of samsara in the little boy without even a glimmer of future redemption.
Among other things, Buddhism is about transcending the attachments and cruelties of egoic life. This film, on the contrary, almost seems a celebration of ego, attachment, and cruelty as eternal givens just barely, if at all, subject to human mitigation. It states that our condition of evil and ignorance - samsara - goes on, despite the hard lessons and best efforts of our young monk; despite the self-mastery of someone who has understood samsara's illusional nature and is now raising his own little boy as a monk. However, the core Buddhist message is that samsara can be depotentiated. Instead of expressing the hopeful Buddhist message that cruelty and self-power can be transcended, the film rubs our nose in it, saying in essence: "See? Samsaric ignorance repeats itself in all generations." So? We sat through this long movie just to hear that cliched bit of common knowledge?
Unlike its advertising in some quarters, this is not a Buddhist film. Buddha said, "I teach suffering... AND the END of suffering." This film only portrays the first half of Buddha's dictum, and leaves the human condition in a perpetual state of suffering, ignorance, and cruelty, while ignoring the liberating second half which concerns liberation. And that is what makes this movie a downer.