The New Film Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Based On
Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in distinctly odd movies. The narratives he creates defy convention, for instance The Lobster, where singletons must partner up or risk being turned into animals. When he adapts another creator's story, he often selects basis material that’s rather eccentric too — odder, possibly, than his cinematic take. That was the case regarding the recent Poor Things, an adaptation of the novel by Alasdair Gray wonderfully twisted novel, a pro-female, sex-positive spin on Frankenstein. His film is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of eccentricity and Gray’s balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
His following selection for adaptation was likewise drawn from unexpected territory. The source text for Bugonia, his recent team-up with star Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean genre stew of science fiction, dark humor, horror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It’s a strange film not primarily due to its subject matter — though that is highly unconventional — but due to the wild intensity of its atmosphere and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed a creative spirit in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to an explosion of daringly creative, boundary-pushing movies by emerging talents of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted concurrently with Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’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, dark comedy, pointed observations, and defying expectations.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who kidnaps a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an extraterrestrial hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. At first, that idea is played as broad comedy, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. He and his naive entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) sport black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets fitted with mental shields, and use ointment for defense. However, they manage in seizing drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to a secluded location, a makeshift laboratory constructed on an old mine in a rural area, home to his apiary.
Shifting Tones
Moving forward, the film veers quickly into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, eventually driving the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; fueled entirely by the belief of his innate dominance, he is prepared and capable to endure awful experiences just to try to escape and exert power over the clearly unwell protagonist. Simultaneously, a notably inept investigation for the abductor begins. The detectives' foolishness and clumsiness recalls Memories of Murder, even if it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with plotting that seems slapdash and improvised.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, fueled by its wild momentum, defying conventions without pause, well past it seems likely 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 symbolic tale about the callousness of the economic system; alternately it serves as a dirty, tense scare-fest or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of intense focus throughout, and the lead actor is excellent, even though the protagonist continuously shifts from savant prophet, endearing eccentric, and dangerous lunatic in response to the movie’s constant shifts in mood, viewpoint, and story. One could argue that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it can be rather bewildering.
Intentional Disorientation
Jang probably consciously intended to unsettle spectators, indeed. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for genre limits partly, and a genuine outrage about human cruelty additionally. It stands as a loud proclamation of a society establishing its international presence amid new economic and social changes. It will be fascinating to observe how Lanthimos views the original plot through a modern Western lens — arguably, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream for free.
