Bugonia Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays are weird, for instance The Lobster, where single people need to find love or face transformed into creatures. When he adapts someone else’s work, he often selects original works that’s rather eccentric also — more bizarre, maybe, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation regarding the recent Poor Things, a film version of author Alasdair Gray's delightfully aberrant novel, a pro-female, liberated take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is good, but partially, his specific style of weirdness and Gray’s cancel each other out.
The Director's Latest Choice
His following selection for adaptation was likewise drawn from the fringes. The source text for Bugonia, his recent collaboration with star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean genre stew of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. The movie is odd not primarily due to its subject matter — though that is highly unconventional — but for the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and directorial method. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed something in the air within the country at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to an explosion of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies by emerging talents of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted concurrently with the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those iconic films, but there are similarities with them: extreme violence, morbid humor, bitter social commentary, and defying expectations.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who abducts a chemical-company executive, thinking he's an alien from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. At first, the premise unfolds as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. He and his innocent acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the star) wear slick rainwear and absurd helmets adorned with mental shields, and use balm as a weapon. But they do succeed in abducting drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building constructed in a former excavation amid the hills, where he keeps bees.
Growing Tension
Hereafter, the narrative turns into ever more unsettling. The protagonist ties Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and subjects him to harm while spouting bizarre plots, eventually driving the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; fueled entirely by the conviction of his own superiority, he can and will to endure awful experiences just to try to escape and lord it over the clearly unwell younger man. Meanwhile, a deeply unimpressive investigation for the kidnapper gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and incompetence recalls Memories of Murder, even if it may not be as deliberate in a film with a plot that appears haphazard and improvised.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, propelled by its own crazed energy, defying conventions underfoot, long after you might expect it to find stability or run out of steam. Occasionally it feels as a character study regarding psychological issues and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory about the callousness of the economic system; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or a bumbling detective tale. The filmmaker brings the same level of hysterical commitment in all scenes, and the performer is excellent, even though the protagonist keeps morphing between visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho depending on the movie’s constant shifts in mood, viewpoint, and story. It seems it's by design, not a bug, but it can be rather bewildering.
Designed to Confuse
The director likely meant to confuse viewers, of course. In line with various Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a joyful, extreme defiance for genre limits in one aspect, and a quite sincere anger about man’s inhumanity to man additionally. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation establishing its international presence alongside fresh commercial and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating to witness how Lanthimos views this narrative from contemporary America — possibly, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream without charge.
