The New Film Couldn't Be Weirder Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in distinctly odd movies. His original stories veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals are compelled to form relationships or face being turned into animals. When he adapts someone else’s work, he frequently picks original works that’s quite peculiar also — more bizarre, possibly, than his adaptation of it. That was the case for last year's Poor Things, a film version of the novel by Alasdair Gray delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, liberated spin on Frankenstein. His film is good, but in a way, his specific style of eccentricity and the author's neutralize one another.
The Director's Latest Choice
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to bring to screen also came from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his recent project alongside acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean fusion of science fiction, dark humor, terror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece less because of what it’s about — though that is decidedly unusual — but for the chaotic extremity of its tone and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
There likely existed a creative spirit within the country in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of an explosion of stylistically bold, innovative movies from a new generation of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted alongside Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those celebrated works, but there are similarities with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, pointed observations, and defying expectations.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who captures a corporate CEO, believing he’s an extraterrestrial hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. At first, that idea unfolds as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a charmingly misguided figure. He and his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) don plastic capes and absurd helmets encrusted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ ointment for defense. Yet they accomplish in seizing intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and bringing him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a ramshackle house/lab assembled at a mining site in a rural area, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Moving forward, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and inflicts pain while declaiming bizarre plots, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. But Kang is no victim; driven solely by the conviction of his own superiority, he is willing and able to subject himself awful experiences to attempt an exit and exert power over the disturbed protagonist. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive investigation for the abductor commences. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness recalls Memories of Murder, although it may not be as deliberate within a story with a plot that seems slapdash and spontaneous.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its wild momentum, trampling genre norms without pause, even when it seems likely it to calm down or falter. Sometimes it seems to be a drama regarding psychological issues and pharmaceutical abuse; in parts it transforms into a symbolic tale regarding the indifference of corporate culture; alternately it serves as a dirty, tense scare-fest or a bumbling detective tale. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of feverish dedication throughout, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, even though the character of Byeong-gu continuously shifts between visionary, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho as required by the movie’s constant shifts in mood, viewpoint, and story. It seems it's by design, not a bug, but it may prove rather bewildering.
Intentional Disorientation
It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, of course. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a joyful, extreme defiance for genre limits on one side, and a quite sincere anger about man’s inhumanity to man on the other. It’s a roaring expression of a society establishing its international presence during emerging financial and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to observe how Lanthimos views this narrative from contemporary America — arguably, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
