The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Adapted From

Aegean surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays defy convention, for instance The Lobster, where unattached individuals need to find love or else be being turned into animals. When he adapts existing material, he often selects basis material that’s rather eccentric too — odder, maybe, than the version he creates. Such was the situation regarding the recent Poor Things, a screen interpretation of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, a pro-female, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but in a way, his specific style of eccentricity and the author's neutralize one another.

The Director's Latest Choice

His following selection to interpret also came from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his latest team-up with leading actress Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, black comedy, terror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. The movie is odd not primarily due to its subject matter — even if that's highly unconventional — but due to the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and directorial method. It's an insane journey.

The Burst of Korean Film

There likely existed a certain energy within the country during that period. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in an explosion of stylistically bold, innovative movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those celebrated works, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and genre subversion.

Narrative Progression

Save the Green Planet! is about an unhinged individual who captures a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an alien from the planet Andromeda, intent on world domination. Initially, this concept is presented as broad comedy, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a lovably deluded fool. He and his innocent entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) sport slick rainwear and absurd helmets encrusted with anti-mind-control devices, and use menthol rub in combat. However, they manage in abducting intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and taking him to a secluded location, a makeshift laboratory constructed in a former excavation amid the hills, which houses his beehives.

Growing Tension

From this point, the narrative turns into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and subjects him to harm while ranting outlandish ideas, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; fueled entirely by the certainty of his innate dominance, he is prepared and capable to undergo awful experiences in hopes of breaking free and lord it over the disturbed younger man. Simultaneously, a notably inept investigation for the abductor begins. The cops’ witlessness and clumsiness echoes Memories of Murder, even if it may not be as deliberate within a story with a plot that comes off as rushed and unrehearsed.

Unrelenting Pace

Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its manic force, breaking rules along the way, well past it seems likely it to either settle down or lose energy. Sometimes it seems as a character study on instability and excessive drug use; at other times it becomes a fantasy allegory on the cruelty of capitalism; in turns it's a dirty, tense scare-fest or a bumbling detective tale. Director Jang brings the same level of intense focus in all scenes, and the performer delivers a standout performance, while the protagonist keeps morphing among visionary, charming oddball, and frightening madman in response to the movie’s constant shifts in tone, perspective, and plot. It seems this is intentional, not a bug, but it can be rather bewildering.

Designed to Confuse

It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, indeed. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a joyful, extreme defiance for stylistic boundaries partly, and a genuine outrage about human cruelty additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a nation finding its global voice amid new economic and cultural freedoms. One can look forward to witness Lanthimos' perspective on the same story from contemporary America — arguably, a contrasting viewpoint.

Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.