Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Weirder Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Aegean surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for extremely strange movies. The narratives he creates are weird, like The Lobster, in which unattached individuals must partner up or face being turned into animals. Whenever he interprets existing material, he often selects basis material that’s pretty odd too — odder, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. This proved true regarding the recent Poor Things, an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, liberated reimagining of Frankenstein. His film is effective, but in a way, his specific style of oddity and Gray’s cancel each other out.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
Lanthimos’ next pick to bring to screen was likewise drawn from far out in left field. The basis for Bugonia, his recent team-up with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean genre stew of science fiction, black comedy, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to its plot — even if that's decidedly unusual — but due to the frenzied excess of its mood and storytelling style. It’s a wild, wild ride.
The Burst of Korean Film
There likely existed a certain energy in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a surge of audacious in style, groundbreaking movies by emerging talents of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out the same year as Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those celebrated works, but there are similarities with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and genre subversion.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who abducts a business tycoon, convinced he is a being from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, this concept unfolds as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear fitted with anti-mind-control devices, and use menthol rub for defense. Yet they accomplish in seizing drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and taking him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building he’s built in a former excavation in a rural area, which houses his beehives.
A Descent into Darkness
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. The protagonist ties Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. But Kang is no victim; fueled entirely by the belief of his innate dominance, he is willing and able to subject himself horrifying ordeals in hopes of breaking free and dominate the mentally unstable protagonist. Simultaneously, a notably inept police hunt to find the criminal gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and lack of skill recalls Memories of Murder, although it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with a plot that seems slapdash and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, driven by its own crazed energy, defying conventions along the way, even when one would assume it to either settle down or falter. At moments it appears to be a drama on instability and excessive drug use; sometimes it’s a metaphorical narrative on the cruelty of the economic system; alternately it serves as a grimy basement horror or a sloppy cop movie. Director Jang applies equal measure of feverish dedication in all scenes, and the lead actor shines, even though the character of Byeong-gu constantly changes from visionary, endearing eccentric, and frightening madman depending on the movie’s constant shifts across style, angle, and events. I think it's by design, not a mistake, but it can be quite confusing.
Intentional Disorientation
The director likely meant to unsettle spectators, of course. Like so many Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for artistic rules in one aspect, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality on the other. It stands as a loud proclamation of a society finding its global voice alongside fresh commercial and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to observe the director's interpretation of the original plot through a modern Western lens — arguably, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.
