The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays are weird, for instance The Lobster, where singletons need to find love or face changed into beasts. Whenever he interprets someone else’s work, he tends to draw from source material that’s rather eccentric too — odder, possibly, than the version he creates. This proved true regarding the recent Poor Things, an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, open-minded take on Frankenstein. His film is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of eccentricity and the author's cancel each other out.
The Director's Latest Choice
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to bring to screen similarly emerged from the fringes. The original work for Bugonia, his newest team-up with leading actress Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean fusion of science fiction, dark humor, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to what it’s about — though that is decidedly unusual — but for the wild intensity of its tone and directorial method. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There must have been a certain energy across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in an explosion of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies from fresh voices of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted concurrently with the director'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: extreme violence, morbid humor, bitter social commentary, and defying expectations.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who kidnaps a corporate CEO, convinced he is a being from the planet Andromeda, intent on world domination. Early on, the premise is played as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his innocent entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) sport plastic capes and bizarre masks encrusted with mental shields, and wield menthol rub in combat. However, they manage in kidnapping intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and bringing him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building constructed at a mining site in the mountains, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
From this point, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while declaiming outlandish ideas, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. However, Kang isn't helpless; driven solely by the certainty of his innate dominance, he is willing and able to endure horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and lord it over the disturbed younger man. Simultaneously, a notably inept police hunt for the kidnapper gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with plotting that appears haphazard and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, propelled by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms along the way, even when one would assume it to find stability or lose energy. Occasionally it feels to be a drama about mental health and overmedication; in parts it transforms into a metaphorical narrative about the callousness of the economic system; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or a sloppy cop movie. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of feverish dedication in all scenes, and Shin Ha-kyun is excellent, while the character of Byeong-gu keeps morphing among visionary, lovable weirdo, and dangerous lunatic depending on the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think it's by design, not a bug, but it can be rather bewildering.
Intentional Disorientation
It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, mind. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for artistic rules partly, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a society gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating to witness Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot from a current U.S. standpoint — arguably, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
