🔗 Share this article The New Film Isn't Likely to Be Weirder Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Inspired By Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for extremely strange movies. His unique screenplays defy convention, such as The Lobster, in which singletons need to find love or else be changed into beasts. When he adapts someone else’s work, he often selects original works that’s pretty odd also — more bizarre, perhaps, than his cinematic take. That was the case for last year's Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, sex-positive reimagining of Frankenstein. His film stands strong, but in a way, his particular flavor of oddity and the author's cancel each other out. His New Adaptation The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret also came from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his recent collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean fusion of sci-fi, black comedy, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. The movie is odd less because of what it’s about — even if that's decidedly unusual — but for the wild intensity of its tone and storytelling style. The film is a rollercoaster. A Korean Cinema Explosion 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, belonged to a surge of daringly creative, boundary-pushing movies by emerging talents of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those iconic films, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, pointed observations, and genre subversion. Image: Tartan Video Narrative Progression Save the Green Planet! revolves around a disturbed young man who kidnaps a corporate CEO, believing he’s an alien hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. Initially, this concept unfolds as slapstick humor, 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 naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the star) don slick rainwear and ridiculous headgear encrusted with psyche-protection gear, and use ointment in combat. However, they manage in abducting intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a dilapidated building constructed in a former excavation in the mountains, home to his apiary. Shifting Tones From this point, the story shifts abruptly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and physically abuses him while ranting outlandish ideas, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; fueled entirely by the certainty of his elevated status, he can and will to undergo awful experiences to attempt an exit and dominate the mentally unstable kidnapper. At the same time, a deeply unimpressive police hunt for the abductor commences. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, though it may not be as deliberate in a film with a plot that appears haphazard and unrehearsed. Image: Tartan Video A Frenetic Journey Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, well past one would assume it to either settle down or run out of steam. Occasionally it feels like a serious story regarding psychological issues and excessive drug use; sometimes it’s a symbolic tale on the cruelty of capitalism; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of intense focus in all scenes, and the lead actor is excellent, even though Lee Byeong-gu constantly changes from savant prophet, charming oddball, and dangerous lunatic depending on the movie’s constant shifts in mood, viewpoint, and story. It seems that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it may prove rather bewildering. Purposeful Chaos Jang probably consciously intended to disorient his audience, of course. In line with various Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a joyful, extreme defiance for artistic rules in one aspect, and a genuine outrage about man’s inhumanity to man on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a culture gaining worldwide recognition amid new economic and social changes. It will be fascinating to observe Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot from contemporary America — perhaps, a contrasting viewpoint. Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.