Aegean surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in distinctly odd movies. His original stories defy convention, for instance The Lobster, a film where single people are compelled to form relationships or risk changed into beasts. When he adapts someone else’s work, he frequently picks original works that’s quite peculiar as well — stranger, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. That was the case regarding the recent Poor Things, an adaptation of the novel by Alasdair Gray delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, liberated take on Frankenstein. His film is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of oddity and the novelist's balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
Lanthimos’ next pick to bring to screen similarly emerged from the fringes. The source text for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of science fiction, dark humor, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece less because of its plot — although that's far from normal — rather because of the frenzied excess of its mood and narrative approach. It’s a wild, wild ride.
The Burst of Korean Film
There likely existed a creative spirit across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a surge of audacious in style, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out concurrently with the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those celebrated works, but it shares many traits with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and genre subversion.
Narrative Progression
Save the Green Planet! is about a disturbed young man who abducts a chemical-company executive, believing he’s a being from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. At first, the premise 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 an endearing eccentric. He and his naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) sport black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear fitted with mental shields, and wield menthol rub as a weapon. However, they manage in abducting inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and bringing him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory assembled on an old mine in a rural area, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Moving forward, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and physically abuses him while ranting absurd conspiracy theories, eventually driving the innocent partner away. However, Kang isn't helpless; driven solely by the belief of his innate dominance, he can and will to subject himself awful experiences in hopes of breaking free and exert power over the clearly unwell kidnapper. Meanwhile, a notably inept police hunt for the kidnapper begins. The cops’ witlessness and lack of skill recalls Memories of Murder, even if it may not be as deliberate in a film with a plot that seems slapdash and improvised.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, propelled by its wild momentum, trampling genre norms underfoot, even when it seems likely it to find stability or falter. At moments it appears as a character study regarding psychological issues and excessive drug use; sometimes it’s a fantasy allegory on the cruelty of the economic system; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. Director Jang applies equal measure of feverish dedication throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun delivers a standout performance, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing among savant prophet, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho depending on the movie’s constant shifts in tone, perspective, and plot. One could argue this is intentional, not a bug, but it may prove pretty disorienting.
Designed to Confuse
Jang probably consciously intended to confuse viewers, indeed. Similar to numerous Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for stylistic boundaries on one side, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality in another respect. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation finding its global voice amid new economic and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating to observe the director's interpretation of the same story from contemporary America — possibly, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.
