Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for distinctly odd movies. His unique screenplays are weird, like The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals need to find love or face being turned into animals. Whenever he interprets another creator's story, he often selects source material that’s quite peculiar too — odder, maybe, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of the novel by Alasdair Gray wonderfully twisted novel, a pro-female, sex-positive reimagining of Frankenstein. The director's adaptation stands strong, but to some extent, his specific style of eccentricity and the author's balance each other.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation also came from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his recent team-up with star Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of science fiction, dark humor, terror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to what it’s about — although that's decidedly unusual — but for the chaotic extremity of its tone and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster.
A Korean Cinema Explosion
There likely existed a certain energy across Korea in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to an explosion of stylistically bold, groundbreaking movies from fresh voices of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released alongside Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those two crime masterpieces, but it’s got a lot in common with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about an unhinged individual who captures a business tycoon, believing he’s an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, with plans to invade Earth. At first, that idea is presented as broad comedy, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a lovably deluded fool. Together with his innocent entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) wear slick rainwear and absurd helmets adorned with psyche-protection gear, and use menthol rub in combat. However, they manage in seizing intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and taking him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building he’s built at a mining site in the mountains, home to his apiary.
Growing Tension
From this point, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while declaiming bizarre plots, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. Yet the captive is resilient; fueled entirely by the belief of his elevated status, he can and will to undergo horrifying ordeals to attempt an exit and exert power over the clearly unwell protagonist. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive police hunt for the abductor begins. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill echoes Memories of Murder, even if it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with plotting that comes off as rushed and spontaneous.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, fueled by its wild momentum, breaking rules underfoot, even when it seems likely it to calm down or run out of steam. Occasionally it feels to be a drama about mental health and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory about the callousness of capitalism; alternately it serves as a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. The filmmaker maintains a consistent degree of feverish dedication in all scenes, and the performer is excellent, even though Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing from wise seer, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho depending on the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think this is intentional, not a flaw, but it may prove rather bewildering.
Designed to Confuse
It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, mind. Similar to numerous Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for stylistic boundaries in one aspect, and a profound fury about human cruelty additionally. It stands as a loud proclamation of a culture gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. It promises to be intriguing to observe the director's interpretation of the original plot through a modern Western lens — possibly, a contrasting viewpoint.
Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.
