The New Film Isn't Likely to Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Inspired By
Greek avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on extremely strange movies. His unique screenplays veer into the bizarre, such as The Lobster, in which unattached individuals are compelled to form relationships or else be changed into beasts. Whenever he interprets someone else’s work, he tends to draw from source material that’s quite peculiar too — odder, maybe, than his adaptation of it. That was the case with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of Alasdair Gray’s gloriously perverse novel, a feminist, open-minded reimagining of Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but in a way, his unique brand of weirdness and the novelist's balance each other.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret also came from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean fusion of science fiction, dark humor, terror, irony, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not so much for its subject matter — though that is far from normal — but for the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and storytelling style. The film is a rollercoaster.
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, was included in a boom of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from fresh voices of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out the same year as Bong’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, pointed observations, and bending rules.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around a troubled protagonist who abducts a chemical-company executive, thinking he's an alien originating in another galaxy, plotting an attack. Early on, that idea is presented as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as an endearing eccentric. Together with his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) wear black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets adorned with mental shields, and wield ointment in combat. But they do succeed in seizing drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a makeshift laboratory assembled in a former excavation in a rural area, where he keeps bees.
Shifting Tones
Hereafter, the film veers quickly into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, ultimately forcing the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the certainty of his innate dominance, he is prepared and capable to subject himself horrifying ordeals in hopes of breaking free and lord it over the mentally unstable younger man. Simultaneously, a comically inadequate investigation for the abductor begins. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill echoes Memories of Murder, although it’s not so clearly intentional in a movie with a narrative that comes off as rushed and unrehearsed.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, fueled by its own crazed energy, defying conventions underfoot, even when it seems likely it to calm down or run out of steam. Sometimes it seems like a serious story on instability and overmedication; sometimes it’s a metaphorical narrative about the callousness of the economic system; sometimes it’s a dirty, tense scare-fest or a sloppy cop movie. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of intense focus in all scenes, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing among visionary, charming oddball, and frightening madman as required by the movie’s constant shifts across style, angle, and events. It seems that’s a feature, not a bug, but it might feel rather bewildering.
Designed to Confuse
It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, indeed. In line with various Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a joyful, extreme defiance for stylistic boundaries partly, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a culture gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and artistic liberties. It will be fascinating to witness Lanthimos' perspective on the same story from contemporary America — arguably, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.