Meaning of symbols?

yeah, if someone could answer this question, it wuold be very helpful!

I enjoyed this movie a lot but i dont think i'll get the real idea of it all unless this is answered.

Just watched...i know that Kim Ki-duk understand Buddhism, and i remember a tale about a master who dreamt about being a butterfly and then ask himself if he was a butterfly who dreamt about being a man or the contrary...and so on...
p.s: Sorry for my english...i'm brazilian...


"Bring me a dream Burke,bring me a
dream!"

Butterflies are symbols of the souls of the dead according to many folk legends. So this may explain why Ran transforms into a butterfly after she commits a suicide. The butterfly reaches the dead body of Jin in the last scene and then it reincarnates as a human again (we can see her hand holding Jin's). This fact can be seen as the unite of the two characters in death.

I think that Kim Ki-duk draws usually parallels between his own movies. The insane woman in the cell reminds me of Chen Chang's cellmate in Kim Ki-duk's Breath. Both cellmates could represent the heroes' subconscious. Thus, Ran's cellmate firstly caresses her (during the first days in the asylum she is probably strong enough) but finally helps her to commit a suicide (she gives in to her bad psychological state).

In addition, the scene in which Jin paints and then carves the symbols on his trousers is equivalent of the scene in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring in which the old monk paints symbols outside the floating temple (using the tail of a cat) and then makes the young one carve them before the police arrests him. Parallels like those may be used as a game for the viewer and exist in most of Ki-duk's films.

The main characters' dream-connection may be used to show that those two communicate in a higher level than they can understand and their lives are connected in an ironic way (their exes are now lovers, Jin speaks japanese and Ran korean but they don't seem to have any problem understanding each other).

The fact that Jin and Ran put on the shoes of each other's ex-lover may show that they are ready to reconcile with their past and move to a new future. After that sequence their relationship becomes much more intimate (they go on a trip together, they kiss).

I have no idea what the drawings in the temple stand for. And they definitely have some meaning....

The explanations above may seem a little far-fetched but I don't think that Kim Ki-duk makes any choices randomly...