The New Film Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Adapted From
Greek avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays are weird, such as The Lobster, where unattached individuals need to find love or else be being turned into animals. In adapting existing material, he often selects original works that’s pretty odd as well — stranger, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, open-minded reimagining of Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but partially, his specific style of weirdness and the author's neutralize one another.
His New Adaptation
Lanthimos’ next pick to interpret similarly emerged from unexpected territory. The source text for Bugonia, his newest team-up with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, irony, psychological thriller, and cop drama. The movie is odd not primarily due to its subject matter — though that is far from normal — rather because of the wild intensity of its atmosphere and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
The Burst of Korean Film
There must have been a certain energy in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a surge of audacious in style, boundary-pushing movies by emerging talents of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker'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 bending rules.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about a troubled protagonist who captures a chemical-company executive, convinced he is a being from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. Initially, this concept is presented as slapstick humor, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) sport black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets adorned with mental shields, and wield menthol rub for defense. However, they manage in abducting inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and transporting him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a makeshift laboratory assembled on an old mine amid the hills, home to his apiary.
A Descent into Darkness
From this point, the film veers quickly into increasingly disturbing. Lee fastens Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and physically abuses him while ranting bizarre plots, eventually driving the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; powered only by the conviction of his elevated status, he can and will to undergo terrifying trials to attempt an exit and exert power over the clearly unwell kidnapper. At the same time, a notably inept investigation to find the criminal begins. The officers' incompetence and incompetence recalls Memories of Murder, though it may not be as deliberate in a film with plotting that comes off as rushed and unrehearsed.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, fueled by its wild momentum, breaking rules underfoot, even when one would assume it to find stability or lose energy. At moments it appears to be a drama about mental health and overmedication; sometimes it’s a metaphorical narrative regarding the indifference of corporate culture; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. Director Jang maintains a consistent degree of hysterical commitment throughout, and the performer is excellent, although Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing between wise seer, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho depending on the narrative's fluidity across style, angle, and events. One could argue it's by design, not a flaw, but it can be rather bewildering.
Purposeful Chaos
It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, of course. Similar to numerous Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for genre limits on one side, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty in another respect. It stands as a loud proclamation of a culture establishing its international presence during emerging financial and social changes. One can look forward to observe how Lanthimos views the original plot through a modern Western lens — perhaps, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
