The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Inspired By
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. His original stories are weird, like The Lobster, in which singletons are compelled to form relationships or else be being turned into animals. In adapting another creator's story, he often selects original works that’s pretty odd as well — stranger, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation regarding the recent Poor Things, a film version of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, liberated reimagining of Frankenstein. His film stands strong, but to some extent, his specific style of weirdness and Gray’s neutralize one another.
His New Adaptation
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to bring to screen was likewise drawn from far out in left field. The original work for Bugonia, his recent team-up with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece not primarily due to its plot — although that's highly unconventional — rather because of the chaotic extremity of its tone and directorial method. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
It seems there was something in the air across Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a surge of audacious in style, groundbreaking movies from fresh voices of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released concurrently with Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those iconic films, but it’s got a lot in common with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and bending rules.
Narrative Progression
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who captures a business tycoon, believing he’s an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, plotting an attack. Initially, this concept unfolds as broad comedy, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. He and his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) wear slick rainwear and absurd helmets adorned with psyche-protection gear, and wield balm in combat. However, they manage in kidnapping drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and taking him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building he’s built at a mining site in the mountains, which houses his beehives.
A Descent into Darkness
From this point, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and inflicts pain while ranting bizarre plots, ultimately forcing the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; powered only by the conviction of his elevated status, he is willing and able to undergo awful experiences in hopes of breaking free and dominate the clearly unwell kidnapper. At the same time, a notably inept manhunt to find the criminal commences. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, even if the similarity might be accidental within a story with a plot that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, fueled by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms underfoot, even when it seems likely it to calm down or falter. Occasionally it feels like a serious story on instability and pharmaceutical abuse; sometimes it’s a symbolic tale about the callousness of capitalism; in turns it's a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of feverish dedication in all scenes, and the performer is excellent, even though the character of Byeong-gu keeps morphing from wise seer, endearing eccentric, and frightening madman in response to the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think this is intentional, not a mistake, but it might feel quite confusing.
Intentional Disorientation
Jang probably consciously intended to disorient his audience, of course. Like so many Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for stylistic boundaries partly, and a genuine outrage about man’s inhumanity to man additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a culture gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. One can look forward to see the director's interpretation of the same story through a modern Western lens — possibly, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream for free.
