The New Film Couldn't Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on distinctly odd movies. His unique screenplays veer into the bizarre, such as The Lobster, where singletons are compelled to form relationships or face transformed into creatures. In adapting someone else’s work, he frequently picks original works that’s rather eccentric as well — stranger, possibly, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of Alasdair Gray’s gloriously perverse novel, a feminist, open-minded reimagining of Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version stands strong, but in a way, his specific style of oddity and Gray’s balance each other.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret similarly emerged from far out in left field. The original work for Bugonia, his latest team-up with star Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece less because of its subject matter — although that's highly unconventional — but for the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and directorial method. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There must have been something in the air within the country at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of an explosion of daringly creative, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released alongside the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those two crime masterpieces, but there are similarities with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, pointed observations, and bending rules.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around an unhinged individual who abducts a chemical-company executive, thinking he's an extraterrestrial hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. Initially, the premise is played as slapstick humor, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as an endearing eccentric. He and his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) sport black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets fitted with psyche-protection gear, and wield ointment in combat. Yet they accomplish in seizing drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building constructed on an old mine in the mountains, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Moving forward, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. The protagonist ties Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while declaiming outlandish ideas, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. But Kang is no victim; driven solely by the belief of his own superiority, he can and will to endure horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and exert power over the mentally unstable kidnapper. At the same time, a notably inept manhunt for the abductor gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, even if it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with plotting that appears haphazard and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, propelled by its manic force, trampling genre norms without pause, even when it seems likely it to find stability or lose energy. Occasionally it feels like a serious story regarding psychological issues and excessive drug use; at other times it becomes a symbolic tale about the callousness of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. Director Jang maintains a consistent degree of intense focus throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun shines, although Lee Byeong-gu constantly changes among visionary, charming oddball, and dangerous lunatic as required by the movie’s constant shifts in tone, perspective, and plot. One could argue it's by design, not a mistake, but it can be quite confusing.
Designed to Confuse
It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, indeed. In line with various Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is driven by an exuberant rejection for artistic rules partly, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality additionally. It stands as a loud proclamation of a nation gaining worldwide recognition amid new economic and social changes. One can look forward to see how Lanthimos views this narrative from a current U.S. standpoint — possibly, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online for free.
