The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays defy convention, like The Lobster, a film where single people need to find love or else be transformed into creatures. Whenever he interprets existing material, he often selects original works that’s pretty odd too — odder, possibly, than his adaptation of it. This proved true regarding the recent Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. His film is good, but in a way, his particular flavor of eccentricity and the author's balance each other.
His New Adaptation
His following selection to interpret similarly emerged from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of science fiction, black comedy, terror, irony, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It’s a strange film less because of its subject matter — although that's highly unconventional — but for the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and storytelling style. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
It seems there was something in the air across Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a boom of audacious in style, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out alongside Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those iconic films, but it’s got a lot in common with them: extreme violence, morbid humor, pointed observations, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around a troubled protagonist who captures a business tycoon, thinking he's a being hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. At first, this concept unfolds as slapstick humor, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear slick rainwear and bizarre masks adorned with psyche-protection gear, and use balm for defense. Yet they accomplish in abducting inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and bringing him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a ramshackle house/lab constructed at a mining site amid the hills, where he keeps bees.
Growing Tension
Hereafter, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang into a makeshift device and subjects him to harm while spouting outlandish ideas, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; driven solely by the conviction of his innate dominance, he is willing and able to subject himself terrifying trials to attempt an exit and lord it over the mentally unstable younger man. Simultaneously, a notably inept police hunt for the abductor gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, even if it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with a plot that seems slapdash and improvised.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its wild momentum, trampling genre norms along the way, long after you might expect it to calm down or run out of steam. Occasionally it feels as a character study regarding psychological issues and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a symbolic tale regarding the indifference of the economic system; alternately it serves as a dirty, tense scare-fest or a sloppy cop movie. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of intense focus throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun shines, while the protagonist constantly changes from visionary, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho as required by the film's ever-changing tone in tone, perspective, and plot. I think this is intentional, not a bug, but it might feel pretty disorienting.
Purposeful Chaos
Jang probably consciously intended to disorient his audience, mind. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for artistic rules partly, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty in another respect. It’s a roaring expression of a society establishing its international presence during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. It promises to be intriguing to see the director's interpretation of the same story from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream for free.