The New Film Can't Possibly Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Adapted From
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in distinctly odd movies. His original stories defy convention, like The Lobster, where single people must partner up or risk being turned into animals. When he adapts existing material, he often selects source material that’s pretty odd too — odder, possibly, than his cinematic take. That was the case for last year's Poor Things, a film version of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. His film stands strong, but to some extent, his particular flavor of eccentricity and the novelist's cancel each other out.
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 collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, black comedy, terror, irony, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It's an unusual piece less because of what it’s about — although that's decidedly unusual — but due to the chaotic extremity of its mood and directorial method. It’s a wild, wild ride.
The Burst of Korean Film
It seems there was a creative spirit within the country at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of daringly creative, innovative movies from fresh voices of filmmakers including 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! doesn't quite match up as those celebrated works, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a corporate CEO, thinking he's an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, with plans to invade Earth. Initially, that idea unfolds as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his childlike acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) don slick rainwear and bizarre masks fitted with psyche-protection gear, and wield menthol rub in combat. Yet they accomplish in kidnapping drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a makeshift laboratory constructed in a former excavation in the mountains, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. The protagonist ties Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and inflicts pain while ranting bizarre plots, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; fueled entirely by the belief of his elevated status, he is willing and able to undergo horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and exert power over the disturbed kidnapper. Simultaneously, a notably inept manhunt for the kidnapper gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and incompetence recalls Memories of Murder, though it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with a plot that seems slapdash and spontaneous.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its wild momentum, defying conventions along the way, well past you might expect it to either settle down or falter. At moments it appears like a serious story about mental health and pharmaceutical abuse; at other times it becomes a fantasy allegory about the callousness of capitalism; in turns it's a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan brings the same level of intense focus in all scenes, and the lead actor shines, even though the character of Byeong-gu keeps morphing from visionary, charming oddball, and dangerous lunatic depending on the movie’s constant shifts in mood, viewpoint, and story. It seems that’s a feature, not a bug, but it may prove rather bewildering.
Purposeful Chaos
It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, mind. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a joyful, extreme defiance for artistic rules in one aspect, and a quite sincere anger about man’s inhumanity to man on the other. It stands as a loud proclamation of a culture finding its global voice amid new economic and social changes. It will be fascinating to see Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot from contemporary America — possibly, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.
