Aegean surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on extremely strange movies. His unique screenplays are weird, for instance The Lobster, a film where single people are compelled to form relationships or risk changed into beasts. When he adapts another creator's story, he tends to draw from basis material that’s quite peculiar also — more bizarre, maybe, than his adaptation of it. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, an adaptation of the novel by Alasdair Gray wonderfully twisted novel, a pro-female, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation stands strong, but partially, his particular flavor of eccentricity and the novelist's cancel each other out.
The Director's Latest Choice
His following selection to bring to screen was likewise drawn from unexpected territory. The source text for Bugonia, his recent project alongside acclaimed performer Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean fusion of science fiction, black comedy, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to what it’s about — although that's far from normal — rather because of the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and storytelling style. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
There likely existed a certain energy in South Korea in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a surge of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released the same year as Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and genre subversion.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who kidnaps a chemical-company executive, convinced he is an alien hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. Early on, this concept is presented as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. Alongside his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear slick rainwear and ridiculous headgear adorned with anti-mind-control devices, and wield menthol rub for defense. But they do succeed in abducting intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building he’s built on an old mine in the mountains, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
Moving forward, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, eventually driving the innocent partner away. However, Kang isn't helpless; powered only by the certainty of his own superiority, he is willing and able to undergo awful experiences just to try to escape and exert power over the disturbed younger man. At the same time, a deeply unimpressive manhunt to find the criminal gets underway. The officers' incompetence and incompetence recalls Memories of Murder, even if it may not be as deliberate within a story with plotting that comes off as rushed and improvised.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, driven by its wild momentum, breaking rules underfoot, long after one would assume it to calm down or falter. Occasionally it feels as a character study about mental health and pharmaceutical abuse; at other times it becomes a metaphorical narrative on the cruelty of corporate culture; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or a sloppy cop movie. Jang Joon-hwan maintains a consistent degree of hysterical commitment throughout, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, while the protagonist keeps morphing among savant prophet, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho as required by the movie’s constant shifts across style, angle, and events. I think this is intentional, not a mistake, but it might feel quite confusing.
Purposeful Chaos
It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, of course. Like so many Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for artistic rules partly, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality in another respect. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a society finding its global voice during emerging financial and social changes. One can look forward to witness how Lanthimos views the original plot from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream at no cost.
