Bugonia Couldn't Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Aegean surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in distinctly odd movies. The narratives he creates defy convention, for instance The Lobster, a film where singletons are compelled to form relationships or else be changed into beasts. In adapting another creator's story, he tends to draw from original works that’s pretty odd too — odder, perhaps, than his cinematic take. Such was the situation for last year's Poor Things, a film version of the novel by Alasdair Gray gloriously perverse novel, a feminist, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but to some extent, his specific style of oddity and the author's neutralize one another.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
His following selection to bring to screen was likewise drawn from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece not primarily due to its plot — although that's far from normal — but for the wild intensity of its atmosphere and narrative approach. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
It seems there was a creative spirit across Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of audacious in style, groundbreaking movies from fresh voices of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those celebrated works, but it’s got a lot in common with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! focuses on an unhinged individual who abducts a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an alien hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, that idea is presented as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like a lovably deluded fool. Together with his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) sport black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear encrusted with anti-mind-control devices, and use balm in combat. Yet they accomplish in kidnapping intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a ramshackle house/lab he’s built on an old mine in the mountains, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
From this point, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. The protagonist ties Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while spouting outlandish ideas, eventually driving his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the conviction of his own superiority, he is willing and able to undergo terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and dominate the clearly unwell protagonist. Simultaneously, a comically inadequate police hunt for the abductor commences. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental within a story with a plot that appears haphazard and unrehearsed.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, propelled by its wild momentum, defying conventions along the way, well past it seems likely it to calm down or falter. At moments it appears like a serious story regarding psychological issues and pharmaceutical abuse; sometimes it’s a fantasy allegory regarding the indifference of the economic system; in turns it's a grimy basement horror or a sloppy cop movie. Director Jang brings the same level of feverish dedication throughout, and the performer delivers a standout performance, even though the character of Byeong-gu constantly changes from visionary, lovable weirdo, and dangerous lunatic depending on the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. One could argue it's by design, not a bug, but it can be pretty disorienting.
Purposeful Chaos
It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, indeed. In line with various Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a joyful, extreme defiance for genre limits on one side, and a profound fury about human cruelty additionally. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation finding its global voice amid new economic and social changes. It promises to be intriguing to observe the director's interpretation of the same story from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
