The New Film Couldn't Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in extremely strange movies. The narratives he creates veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, a film where single people must partner up or face changed into beasts. Whenever he interprets existing material, he often selects basis material that’s pretty odd too — odder, perhaps, than the version he creates. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, an adaptation of author Alasdair Gray's gloriously perverse novel, a pro-female, liberated take on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of weirdness and the novelist's cancel each other out.
The Director's Latest Choice
His following selection to interpret also came from the fringes. The source text for Bugonia, his newest team-up with leading actress Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean fusion of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It’s a strange film less because of what it’s about — even if that's far from normal — but for the chaotic extremity of its tone and storytelling style. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
There likely existed something in the air within the country in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in an explosion of daringly creative, boundary-pushing movies by emerging talents of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out alongside Bong’s Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around an unhinged individual who kidnaps a corporate CEO, thinking he's an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, with plans to invade Earth. At first, this concept unfolds as slapstick humor, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. Alongside his naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the star) don plastic capes and ridiculous headgear adorned with anti-mind-control devices, and wield ointment for defense. Yet they accomplish in seizing drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a makeshift laboratory constructed on an old mine amid the hills, where he keeps bees.
Shifting Tones
Hereafter, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while ranting outlandish ideas, eventually driving his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the belief of his own superiority, he is willing and able to subject himself awful experiences in hopes of breaking free and dominate the clearly unwell protagonist. Meanwhile, a notably inept manhunt for the abductor gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although it may not be as deliberate in a film with plotting that appears haphazard and improvised.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, driven by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms underfoot, long after you might expect it to calm down or lose energy. Sometimes it seems like a serious story regarding psychological issues and pharmaceutical abuse; sometimes it’s a fantasy allegory on the cruelty of the economic system; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or a sloppy cop movie. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of hysterical commitment in all scenes, and Shin Ha-kyun delivers a standout performance, although the protagonist continuously shifts between visionary, charming oddball, and dangerous lunatic as required by the narrative's fluidity across style, angle, and events. I think it's by design, not a flaw, but it can be pretty disorienting.
Designed to Confuse
Jang probably consciously intended to confuse viewers, indeed. Like so many Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for genre limits in one aspect, and a genuine outrage about man’s inhumanity to man additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a nation finding its global voice amid new economic and artistic liberties. One can look forward to witness how Lanthimos views the same story through a modern Western lens — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online for free.
