The New Film Isn't Likely to Be More Bizarre Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Inspired By
Aegean surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in highly unusual movies. His original stories veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, a film where singletons need to find love or else be changed into beasts. Whenever he interprets existing material, he tends to draw from source material that’s quite peculiar too — odder, maybe, than his cinematic take. That was the case for last year's Poor Things, a film version of author Alasdair Gray's gloriously perverse novel, an empowering, open-minded spin on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of oddity and the novelist's cancel each other out.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to bring to screen similarly emerged from the fringes. The basis for Bugonia, his recent collaboration with leading actress Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean genre stew of science fiction, black comedy, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It’s a strange film less because of its plot — even if that's decidedly unusual — rather because of the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and directorial method. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
There likely existed something in the air across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a boom of stylistically bold, groundbreaking movies from fresh voices of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released concurrently with the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those two crime masterpieces, but there are similarities with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and bending rules.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a business tycoon, convinced he is an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, intent on world domination. Initially, this concept unfolds as broad comedy, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. Alongside his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) wear slick rainwear and absurd helmets encrusted with mental shields, and use menthol rub as a weapon. Yet they accomplish in seizing inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a dilapidated building assembled on an old mine in the mountains, which houses his beehives.
A Descent into Darkness
Moving forward, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. Lee fastens Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while ranting outlandish ideas, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the belief of his elevated status, he is willing and able to endure terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and exert power over the disturbed protagonist. Meanwhile, a notably inept investigation for the kidnapper commences. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with a plot that appears haphazard and improvised.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, driven by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms along the way, long after you might expect it to find stability or falter. At moments it appears to be a drama on instability and overmedication; at other times it becomes a fantasy allegory on the cruelty of capitalism; alternately it serves as a dirty, tense scare-fest or a sloppy cop movie. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of feverish dedication to every bit, and the lead actor shines, although Lee Byeong-gu continuously shifts from wise seer, endearing eccentric, and terrifying psycho depending on the film's ever-changing tone across style, angle, and events. I think this is intentional, not a bug, but it can be rather bewildering.
Intentional Disorientation
The director likely meant to unsettle spectators, of course. Like so many Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a joyful, extreme defiance for stylistic boundaries in one aspect, and a genuine outrage about human cruelty additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a society establishing its international presence alongside fresh commercial and social changes. It promises to be intriguing to observe Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot from contemporary America — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.
