The New Film Couldn't Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Based On

Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in extremely strange movies. The narratives he creates veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals need to find love or face changed into beasts. When he adapts someone else’s work, he tends to draw from original works that’s rather eccentric as well — stranger, maybe, than his cinematic take. That was the case regarding the recent Poor Things, a film version of the novel by Alasdair Gray gloriously perverse novel, an empowering, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is good, but partially, his particular flavor of weirdness and Gray’s cancel each other out.

His New Adaptation

Lanthimos’ next pick to bring to screen was likewise drawn from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his recent team-up with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean fusion of science fiction, black comedy, horror, irony, psychological thriller, and police procedural. The movie is odd not primarily due to what it’s about — although that's decidedly unusual — but due to the wild intensity of its mood and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.

A New Wave of Filmmaking

There likely existed a creative spirit within the country in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of daringly creative, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted alongside Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those iconic films, but it’s got a lot in common with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and bending rules.

The Plot Unfolds

Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who captures a chemical-company executive, thinking he's an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, plotting an attack. Early on, this concept is played as broad comedy, 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. Alongside his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets adorned with anti-mind-control devices, and use balm in combat. However, they manage in kidnapping intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory he’s built at a mining site amid the hills, where he keeps bees.

Growing Tension

Hereafter, the narrative turns into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and subjects him to harm while ranting absurd conspiracy theories, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the belief of his own superiority, he can and will to subject himself terrifying trials to attempt an exit and dominate the mentally unstable kidnapper. At the same time, a comically inadequate police hunt for the kidnapper begins. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness recalls Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a film with plotting that comes off as rushed and unrehearsed.

Unrelenting Pace

Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, fueled by its own crazed energy, defying conventions without pause, long after you might expect it to calm down or falter. Sometimes it seems to be a drama about mental health and pharmaceutical abuse; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory regarding the indifference of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or a bumbling detective tale. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of feverish dedication in all scenes, and the lead actor is excellent, even though Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing from visionary, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho depending on the movie’s constant shifts in tone, perspective, and plot. One could argue that’s a feature, not a bug, but it might feel quite confusing.

Intentional Disorientation

Jang probably consciously intended to disorient his audience, indeed. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for stylistic boundaries partly, and a profound fury about man’s inhumanity to man in another respect. It stands as a loud proclamation of a society gaining worldwide recognition alongside fresh commercial and social changes. One can look forward to witness how Lanthimos views the same story from contemporary America — perhaps, the other end of the telescope.

Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.