Bugonia Couldn't Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Based On
Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. The narratives he creates defy convention, like The Lobster, in which singletons are compelled to form relationships or risk being turned into animals. When he adapts another creator's story, he often selects basis material that’s pretty odd too — odder, possibly, than his adaptation of it. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, an adaptation of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, an empowering, sex-positive spin on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version stands strong, but to some extent, his specific style of eccentricity and Gray’s cancel each other out.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
His following selection to bring to screen similarly emerged from far out in left field. The original work for Bugonia, his recent team-up with leading actress Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean fusion of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece not primarily due to its subject matter — even if that's highly unconventional — but due to the frenzied excess of its mood and narrative approach. It’s a wild, wild ride.
The Burst of Korean Film
There must have been a certain energy within the country at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of daringly creative, innovative movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out concurrently with the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those celebrated works, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, bitter social commentary, and defying expectations.
Narrative Progression
Save the Green Planet! revolves around a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a corporate CEO, convinced he is a being hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, the premise is presented as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a lovably deluded fool. He and his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) wear black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets fitted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ menthol rub for defense. However, they manage in abducting drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and transporting him to a secluded location, a ramshackle house/lab constructed on an old mine in a rural area, where he keeps bees.
Growing Tension
From this point, the film veers quickly into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and inflicts pain while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, eventually driving the innocent partner away. But Kang is no victim; powered only by the belief of his innate dominance, he is prepared and capable to subject himself horrifying ordeals to attempt an exit and lord it over the clearly unwell protagonist. Simultaneously, a notably inept manhunt for the abductor commences. The detectives' foolishness and lack of skill recalls Memories of Murder, though it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with a plot that appears haphazard and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, driven by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, long after it seems likely it to find stability or lose energy. Occasionally it feels to be a drama about mental health and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory about the callousness of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a dirty, tense scare-fest or an incompetent police story. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of intense focus to every bit, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, while the character of Byeong-gu continuously shifts from wise seer, charming oddball, and frightening madman in response to the film's ever-changing tone in mood, viewpoint, and story. One could argue it's by design, not a flaw, but it might feel quite confusing.
Designed to Confuse
The director likely meant to unsettle spectators, indeed. Similar to numerous Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for artistic rules in one aspect, and a genuine outrage about societal brutality in another respect. It’s a roaring expression of a culture finding its global voice during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. One can look forward to observe how Lanthimos views the same story from contemporary America — arguably, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.
