Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for extremely strange movies. His original stories are weird, such as The Lobster, where unattached individuals need to find love or else be being turned into animals. In adapting another creator's story, he frequently picks original works that’s quite peculiar also — more bizarre, possibly, than the version he creates. That was the case for last year's Poor Things, a screen interpretation of Alasdair Gray’s gloriously perverse novel, a pro-female, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. His film stands strong, but in a way, his unique brand of weirdness and the novelist's balance each other.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
Lanthimos’ next pick to interpret was likewise drawn from the fringes. The basis for Bugonia, his latest collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean genre stew of science fiction, black comedy, horror, irony, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film less because of its subject matter — although that's highly unconventional — rather because of the frenzied excess of its mood and storytelling style. The film is a rollercoaster.
The Burst of Korean Film
There must have been a creative spirit within the country at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was part of an explosion of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out 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 two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: extreme violence, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and defying expectations.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about a disturbed young man who kidnaps a business tycoon, thinking he's a being from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, this concept is played as slapstick humor, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his naive entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) wear plastic capes and bizarre masks adorned with psyche-protection gear, and use balm in combat. However, they manage in kidnapping drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and bringing him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building constructed in a former excavation in a rural area, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
Moving forward, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and physically abuses him while ranting absurd conspiracy theories, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; driven solely by the belief of his innate dominance, he is prepared and capable to endure horrifying ordeals to attempt an exit and dominate the clearly unwell kidnapper. Simultaneously, a comically inadequate police hunt to find the criminal commences. The cops’ witlessness and incompetence is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a film with a narrative that appears haphazard and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, driven by its wild momentum, breaking rules underfoot, well past you might expect it to calm down or lose energy. Occasionally it feels to be a drama on instability and overmedication; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory about the callousness of the economic system; sometimes it’s a dirty, tense scare-fest or a sloppy cop movie. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of intense focus throughout, and the performer is excellent, although the protagonist keeps morphing among savant prophet, lovable weirdo, and frightening madman in response to the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it might feel quite confusing.
Purposeful Chaos
It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, indeed. 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 genuine outrage about human cruelty in another respect. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a culture gaining worldwide recognition alongside fresh commercial and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating to see Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot from contemporary America — possibly, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream without charge.
