The New Film Can't Possibly Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for extremely strange movies. His unique screenplays veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, a film where single people are compelled to form relationships or risk transformed into creatures. Whenever he interprets someone else’s work, he tends to draw from basis material that’s rather eccentric too — odder, possibly, than his cinematic take. This proved true with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, liberated spin on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is good, but in a way, his unique brand of eccentricity and Gray’s cancel each other out.
His New Adaptation
The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation also came from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with leading actress Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean mix of styles of science fiction, dark humor, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece less because of its subject matter — although that's decidedly unusual — but due to the wild intensity of its mood and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There must have been a creative spirit across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in an explosion of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out concurrently with the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those iconic films, but there are similarities with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and bending rules.
Narrative Progression
Save the Green Planet! revolves around an unhinged individual who abducts a business tycoon, convinced he is an extraterrestrial hailing from Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Early on, the premise unfolds as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a lovably deluded fool. He and his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) sport black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear encrusted with mental shields, and use balm for defense. However, they manage in abducting inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building assembled in a former excavation in the mountains, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Moving forward, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while spouting bizarre plots, ultimately forcing the gentle Su-ni away. But Kang is no victim; driven solely by the certainty of his elevated status, he can and will to subject himself terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and exert power over the mentally unstable kidnapper. Simultaneously, a comically inadequate police hunt to find the criminal commences. The cops’ witlessness and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental within a story with a plot that appears haphazard and unrehearsed.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, driven by its own crazed energy, defying conventions without pause, even when it seems likely it to calm down or run out of steam. At moments it appears like a serious story regarding psychological issues and pharmaceutical abuse; sometimes it’s a fantasy allegory on the cruelty of corporate culture; in turns it's a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. The filmmaker brings the same level of feverish dedication throughout, and the performer shines, although Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing from savant prophet, endearing eccentric, and terrifying psycho depending on the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think that’s a feature, not a flaw, but it can be rather bewildering.
Purposeful Chaos
Jang probably consciously intended to unsettle spectators, mind. In line with various Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from an exuberant rejection for genre limits partly, and a genuine outrage about human cruelty in another respect. It’s a roaring expression of a society establishing its international presence amid new economic and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to see how Lanthimos views the same story through a modern Western lens — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
