Bugonia Couldn't Be More Bizarre Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On
Greek surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for extremely strange movies. His original stories defy convention, for instance The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals need to find love or risk changed into beasts. Whenever he interprets existing material, he often selects original works that’s rather eccentric as well — stranger, possibly, than his cinematic take. That was the case for last year's Poor Things, an adaptation of author Alasdair Gray's delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, sex-positive spin on Frankenstein. His film stands strong, but in a way, his particular flavor of eccentricity and the author's cancel each other out.
His New Adaptation
The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation also came from unexpected territory. The source text for Bugonia, his latest collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It’s a strange film not primarily due to its plot — though that is highly unconventional — but due to the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed something in the air across Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in an explosion of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from fresh voices of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released 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 celebrated works, but there are similarities with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around an unhinged individual who kidnaps a business tycoon, thinking he's a being hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. At first, this concept unfolds as farce, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. He and his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) don plastic capes and absurd helmets adorned with anti-mind-control devices, and employ balm in combat. But they do succeed in abducting inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (the performer) and transporting him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory assembled at a mining site in the mountains, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
Hereafter, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. Byeong-gu straps Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and physically abuses him while ranting bizarre plots, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. However, Kang isn't helpless; fueled entirely by the conviction of his elevated status, he is prepared and capable to subject himself horrifying ordeals to attempt an exit and lord it over the mentally unstable protagonist. Simultaneously, a comically inadequate manhunt for the kidnapper gets underway. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental in a film with a narrative that seems slapdash and spontaneous.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, propelled by its manic force, trampling genre norms without pause, long after you might expect it to calm down or lose energy. Sometimes it seems like a serious story on instability and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a symbolic tale on the cruelty of the economic system; in turns it's a grimy basement horror or a sloppy cop movie. Director Jang brings the same level of feverish dedication to every bit, and Shin Ha-kyun delivers a standout performance, although Lee Byeong-gu constantly changes among wise seer, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho depending on the narrative's fluidity in tone, perspective, and plot. I think it's by design, not a mistake, but it might feel quite confusing.
Designed to Confuse
It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, of course. Similar to numerous Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is driven by an exuberant rejection for genre limits in one aspect, and a quite sincere anger about man’s inhumanity to man on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a society establishing its international presence during emerging financial and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to observe Lanthimos' perspective on this narrative through a modern Western lens — perhaps, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream without charge.
