The New Film Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Aegean surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on distinctly odd movies. His original stories veer into the bizarre, for instance The Lobster, a film where singletons need to find love or risk changed into beasts. When he adapts another creator's story, he often selects basis material that’s pretty odd too — odder, maybe, than his adaptation of it. This proved true with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of the novel by Alasdair Gray delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version stands strong, but partially, his specific style of oddity and the novelist's balance each other.
His New Adaptation
Lanthimos’ next pick to interpret also came from far out in left field. The basis for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with leading actress Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of science fiction, dark humor, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It's an unusual piece not primarily due to what it’s about — though that is highly unconventional — but due to the wild intensity of its tone and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed a creative spirit within the country in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a boom of stylistically bold, innovative movies from fresh voices of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out alongside the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and defying expectations.
Narrative Progression
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a corporate CEO, thinking he's an alien from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. Initially, the premise unfolds as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin 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 black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets fitted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ balm in combat. However, they manage in seizing intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to a secluded location, a makeshift laboratory constructed in a former excavation in a rural area, which houses his beehives.
A Descent into Darkness
Hereafter, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. Lee fastens Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while spouting absurd conspiracy theories, ultimately forcing the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the certainty of his elevated status, he can and will to subject himself awful experiences just to try to escape and exert power over the disturbed younger man. At the same time, a deeply unimpressive investigation for the kidnapper begins. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness echoes Memories of Murder, even if the similarity might be accidental in a film with a plot that comes off as rushed and unrehearsed.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms along the way, long after you might expect it to find stability or run out of steam. Sometimes it seems as a character study on instability and pharmaceutical abuse; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory regarding the indifference of the economic system; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or a bumbling detective tale. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of feverish dedication to every bit, and Shin Ha-kyun shines, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing among wise seer, endearing eccentric, and dangerous lunatic as required by the narrative's fluidity in tone, perspective, and plot. It seems it's by design, not a flaw, but it can be quite confusing.
Intentional Disorientation
It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, indeed. Similar to numerous Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a joyful, extreme defiance for stylistic boundaries partly, and a genuine outrage about human cruelty additionally. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a society finding its global voice amid new economic and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to witness the director's interpretation of this narrative through a modern Western lens — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream at no cost.
