The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on distinctly odd movies. The narratives he creates are weird, like The Lobster, a film where singletons need to find love or face changed into beasts. In adapting existing material, he often selects original works that’s rather eccentric as well — stranger, perhaps, than his cinematic take. That was the case regarding the recent Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's gloriously perverse novel, a feminist, liberated reimagining of Frankenstein. His film is good, but to some extent, his specific style of oddity and the author's balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret similarly emerged 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 perplexing Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, irony, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It’s a strange film not so much for its plot — though that is highly unconventional — but due to the frenzied excess of its tone and narrative approach. It's an insane journey.
The Burst of Korean Film
There must have been a creative spirit across Korea in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to an explosion of stylistically bold, groundbreaking movies from a new generation of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out 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: extreme violence, morbid humor, pointed observations, and bending rules.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on an unhinged individual who kidnaps a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an alien originating in another galaxy, plotting an attack. Initially, the premise is presented as slapstick humor, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a lovably deluded fool. He and his naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) don plastic capes and bizarre masks fitted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ menthol rub in combat. Yet they accomplish in kidnapping inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and transporting him to the protagonist's isolated home, a ramshackle house/lab he’s built at a mining site in a rural area, home to his apiary.
Shifting Tones
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. Byeong-gu straps Kang onto a crude contraption and subjects him to harm while ranting outlandish ideas, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the conviction of his own superiority, he is prepared and capable to endure terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and exert power over the mentally unstable protagonist. Meanwhile, a comically inadequate investigation for the kidnapper gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, even if the similarity might be accidental in a film with a plot that comes off as rushed and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, driven by its wild momentum, breaking rules without pause, long after it seems likely it to find stability or run out of steam. Sometimes it seems to be a drama about mental health and excessive drug use; sometimes it’s a fantasy allegory regarding the indifference of corporate culture; in turns it's a claustrophobic thriller or a sloppy cop movie. Director Jang maintains a consistent degree of intense focus in all scenes, and the performer is excellent, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing between wise seer, endearing eccentric, and terrifying psycho depending on the movie’s constant shifts across style, angle, and events. I think that’s a feature, not a flaw, but it can be rather bewildering.
Designed to Confuse
It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, of course. Similar to numerous Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for artistic rules on one side, and a profound fury about human cruelty in another respect. It’s a roaring expression of a nation establishing its international presence during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. One can look forward to observe the director's interpretation of this narrative from contemporary America — arguably, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream for free.
