The New Film Can't Possibly Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On
Aegean surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays defy convention, such as The Lobster, where single people are compelled to form relationships or else be transformed into creatures. Whenever he interprets another creator's story, he tends to draw from original works that’s pretty odd also — more bizarre, maybe, than the version he creates. That was the case with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of the novel by Alasdair Gray wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, open-minded spin on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is good, but to some extent, his specific style of oddity and the author's balance each other.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation also came from far out in left field. The source text for Bugonia, his newest team-up with star Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. The movie is odd not so much for its subject matter — although that's far from normal — but due to the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and directorial method. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed a certain energy in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies from a new generation of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted 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: extreme violence, morbid humor, pointed observations, and defying expectations.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who abducts a business tycoon, believing he’s an alien from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, the premise unfolds as slapstick humor, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like an endearing eccentric. Together with his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear slick rainwear and ridiculous headgear encrusted with anti-mind-control devices, and wield balm for defense. Yet they accomplish in abducting intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building assembled on an old mine amid the hills, which houses his beehives.
Shifting Tones
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while declaiming bizarre plots, ultimately forcing the gentle Su-ni away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the certainty of his elevated status, he is prepared and capable to endure terrifying trials 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 detectives' foolishness and incompetence echoes Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a movie with plotting that appears haphazard and improvised.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, propelled by its wild momentum, breaking rules along the way, long after it seems likely it to find stability or lose energy. Sometimes it seems as a character study regarding psychological issues and pharmaceutical abuse; in parts it transforms into a symbolic tale regarding the indifference of the economic system; alternately it serves as a grimy basement horror or a bumbling detective tale. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of hysterical commitment in all scenes, and Shin Ha-kyun delivers a standout performance, although the character of Byeong-gu continuously shifts among visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho depending on the movie’s constant shifts across style, angle, and events. It seems it's by design, not a bug, but it can be pretty disorienting.
Purposeful Chaos
It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, mind. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for artistic rules on one side, and a profound fury about societal brutality additionally. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a culture finding its global voice alongside fresh commercial and social changes. It promises to be intriguing to observe the director's interpretation of the same story through a modern Western lens — arguably, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing for free.
