The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Weirder Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Based On
Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. The narratives he creates veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, in which singletons are compelled to form relationships or risk being turned into animals. When he adapts someone else’s work, he tends to draw from basis material that’s quite peculiar as well — stranger, possibly, than his cinematic take. That was the case with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, an empowering, open-minded spin on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version stands strong, but partially, his unique brand of eccentricity and Gray’s balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation also came from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his latest project alongside star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean mix of styles of science fiction, dark humor, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to its subject matter — though that is decidedly unusual — rather because of the frenzied excess of its mood and storytelling style. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
It seems there was something in the air across Korea in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a surge of stylistically bold, innovative movies by emerging talents of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those celebrated works, but there are similarities with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, sharp societal critique, and defying expectations.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about a disturbed young man who kidnaps a corporate CEO, thinking he's an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, intent on world domination. Initially, that idea is presented as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) sport plastic capes and absurd helmets adorned with mental shields, and wield menthol rub as a weapon. However, they manage in kidnapping inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and bringing him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory assembled at a mining site amid the hills, which houses his beehives.
Growing Tension
Moving forward, the film veers quickly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and subjects him to harm while declaiming outlandish ideas, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. But Kang is no victim; powered only by the certainty of his elevated status, he can and will to subject himself horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and dominate the disturbed protagonist. At the same time, a notably inept investigation for the kidnapper commences. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness recalls Memories of Murder, even if it may not be as deliberate in a movie with a plot that appears haphazard and improvised.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules along the way, even when you might expect it to calm down or falter. Occasionally it feels like a serious story regarding psychological issues and pharmaceutical abuse; at other times it becomes a metaphorical narrative regarding the indifference of corporate culture; alternately it serves as a grimy basement horror or a bumbling detective tale. Director Jang brings the same level of hysterical commitment in all scenes, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, while the character of Byeong-gu keeps morphing between visionary, lovable weirdo, and frightening madman as required by the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. It seems it's by design, not a mistake, but it may prove rather bewildering.
Designed to Confuse
The director likely meant to disorient his audience, of course. In line with various Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from an exuberant rejection for artistic rules on one side, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality on the other. It’s a roaring expression of a culture establishing its international presence amid new economic and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to witness Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot through a modern Western lens — possibly, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream without charge.