The New Film Isn't Likely to Be More Bizarre Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On
Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. His original stories veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, in which singletons are compelled to form relationships or face being turned into animals. In adapting someone else’s work, he tends to draw from basis material that’s quite peculiar also — more bizarre, maybe, than his cinematic take. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, an adaptation of the novel by Alasdair Gray delightfully aberrant novel, a pro-female, liberated reimagining of Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of eccentricity and the author's balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
His following selection to interpret also came from the fringes. The source text for Bugonia, his recent collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of science fiction, dark humor, terror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. The movie is odd not so much for its plot — though that is decidedly unusual — but for the wild intensity of its atmosphere and narrative approach. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed something in the air across Korea in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of a surge of audacious in style, innovative movies from fresh voices of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released concurrently with Bong’s Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, sharp societal critique, and bending rules.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! revolves around a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a corporate CEO, believing he’s a being hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. At first, this concept is played as broad comedy, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as an endearing eccentric. He and his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) don black PVC ponchos and bizarre masks adorned with mental shields, and use balm as a weapon. However, they manage in kidnapping inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to the protagonist's isolated home, a ramshackle house/lab assembled on an old mine in a rural area, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
From this point, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. The protagonist ties Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while ranting outlandish ideas, eventually driving the innocent partner away. However, Kang isn't helpless; fueled entirely by the conviction of his elevated status, he can and will to undergo awful experiences just to try to escape and dominate the clearly unwell protagonist. Meanwhile, a deeply unimpressive manhunt for the abductor gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and incompetence recalls Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental within a story with a narrative that comes off as rushed and improvised.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its wild momentum, trampling genre norms without pause, even when it seems likely it to find stability or falter. Occasionally it feels like a serious story on instability and overmedication; in parts it transforms into a metaphorical narrative about the callousness of capitalism; alternately it serves as a dirty, tense scare-fest or an incompetent police story. The filmmaker brings the same level of intense focus to every bit, and the performer delivers a standout performance, while the character of Byeong-gu continuously shifts among visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho depending on the film's ever-changing tone across style, angle, and events. I think it's by design, not a flaw, but it might feel pretty disorienting.
Designed to Confuse
It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, of course. Like so many Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is driven by an exuberant rejection for stylistic boundaries in one aspect, and a profound fury about societal brutality on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation gaining worldwide recognition amid new economic and artistic liberties. One can look forward to observe how Lanthimos views this narrative from contemporary America — arguably, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.
