Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays are weird, for instance The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals must partner up or face transformed into creatures. When he adapts existing material, he frequently picks basis material that’s rather eccentric as well — stranger, maybe, than the version he creates. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, open-minded spin on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is effective, but in a way, his particular flavor of weirdness and the author's balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
His following selection to bring to screen similarly emerged from unexpected territory. The source text for Bugonia, his latest team-up with star Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of science fiction, dark humor, terror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It’s a strange film not so much for its subject matter — even if that's decidedly unusual — but for the frenzied excess of its mood and directorial method. It’s a wild, wild ride.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
There must have been a certain energy in South Korea in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a surge of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released the same year as Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’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, pointed observations, and bending rules.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a corporate CEO, believing he’s an alien from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Initially, the premise unfolds as broad comedy, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. He and his childlike entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) wear black PVC ponchos and bizarre masks adorned with mental shields, and employ balm in combat. But they do succeed in abducting drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and transporting him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a ramshackle house/lab he’s built at a mining site in the mountains, which houses his beehives.
A Descent into Darkness
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while ranting absurd conspiracy theories, eventually driving the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the conviction of his elevated status, he is willing and able to subject himself terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and lord it over the disturbed protagonist. Meanwhile, a notably inept investigation for the abductor begins. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill echoes Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental within a story with plotting that seems slapdash and spontaneous.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms underfoot, long after you might expect it to either settle down or lose energy. At moments it appears to be a drama on instability and overmedication; sometimes it’s a symbolic tale on the cruelty of capitalism; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. Director Jang brings the same level of feverish dedication to every bit, and Shin Ha-kyun shines, although the character of Byeong-gu keeps morphing between visionary, endearing eccentric, and terrifying psycho in response to the narrative's fluidity across style, angle, and events. One could argue this is intentional, not a flaw, but it may prove pretty disorienting.
Purposeful Chaos
Jang probably consciously intended to unsettle spectators, mind. Similar to numerous Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for genre limits partly, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a society establishing its international presence alongside fresh commercial and social changes. One can look forward to observe how Lanthimos views the original plot from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.
