Bugonia Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Aegean surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. The narratives he creates veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals must partner up or else be transformed into creatures. Whenever he interprets existing material, he often selects basis material that’s rather eccentric also — more bizarre, maybe, than his adaptation of it. This proved true with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is good, but to some extent, his unique brand of oddity and the author's neutralize one another.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to bring to screen similarly emerged from the fringes. The original work for Bugonia, his recent project alongside star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean fusion of science fiction, dark humor, terror, irony, psychological thriller, and police procedural. The movie is odd less because of its plot — though that is highly unconventional — but due to the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and narrative approach. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed something in the air within the country in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a surge of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies by emerging talents of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted alongside Bong’s Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those iconic films, but it shares many traits with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and bending rules.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around an unhinged individual who captures a chemical-company executive, convinced he is a being originating in another galaxy, plotting an attack. At first, that idea unfolds as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his childlike entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) don plastic capes and absurd helmets encrusted with mental shields, and wield ointment in combat. However, they manage in kidnapping inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a dilapidated building he’s built at a mining site amid the hills, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. Lee fastens Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while spouting outlandish ideas, ultimately forcing the gentle Su-ni away. But Kang is no victim; powered only by the belief of his own superiority, he can and will to endure awful experiences just to try to escape and dominate the disturbed younger man. Simultaneously, a notably inept police hunt to find the criminal gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, even if it may not be as deliberate in a movie with a plot that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, driven by its own crazed energy, trampling genre norms along the way, long after you might expect it to either settle down or lose energy. Sometimes it seems like a serious story regarding psychological issues and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory about the callousness of the economic system; in turns it's a dirty, tense scare-fest or a sloppy cop movie. Jang Joon-hwan brings the same level of feverish dedication to every bit, and Shin Ha-kyun is excellent, while Lee Byeong-gu constantly changes between savant prophet, lovable weirdo, and frightening madman in response to the movie’s constant shifts in tone, perspective, and plot. I think this is intentional, not a bug, but it may prove pretty disorienting.
Intentional Disorientation
The director likely meant to confuse viewers, indeed. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for artistic rules partly, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a society finding its global voice alongside fresh commercial and artistic liberties. One can look forward to see the director's interpretation of the same story from a current U.S. standpoint — arguably, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online for free.
