Bugonia Couldn't Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On
Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for extremely strange movies. His original stories defy convention, such as The Lobster, a film where single people are compelled to form relationships or risk changed into beasts. In adapting another creator's story, he frequently picks basis material that’s quite peculiar too — odder, perhaps, than the version he creates. This proved true with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, open-minded reimagining of Frankenstein. His film stands strong, but in a way, his unique brand of eccentricity and the novelist's cancel each other out.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation was likewise drawn from the fringes. The original work for Bugonia, his latest project alongside star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, irony, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It's an unusual piece not primarily due to its subject matter — though that is far from normal — but for the frenzied excess of its tone and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
The Burst of Korean Film
It seems there was a certain energy across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a surge of stylistically bold, innovative movies from a new generation of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those celebrated works, but it’s got a lot in common with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, sharp societal critique, and defying expectations.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about a troubled protagonist who captures a business tycoon, convinced he is an extraterrestrial from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Initially, the premise is presented as broad comedy, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as an endearing eccentric. He and his naive entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) don plastic capes and absurd helmets fitted with psyche-protection gear, and wield balm in combat. But they do succeed in seizing intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and taking him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building constructed on an old mine amid the hills, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and subjects him to harm while spouting outlandish ideas, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the belief of his innate dominance, he can and will to undergo terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and exert power over the clearly unwell younger man. At the same time, a comically inadequate manhunt for the kidnapper gets underway. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a film with a plot that comes off as rushed and spontaneous.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, well past one would assume it to calm down or lose energy. Occasionally it feels like a serious story about mental health and excessive drug use; at other times it becomes a symbolic tale regarding the indifference of capitalism; in turns it's a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. Director Jang applies equal measure of intense focus throughout, and the lead actor shines, while the protagonist continuously shifts among visionary, charming oddball, and dangerous lunatic as required by the film's ever-changing tone in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it might feel pretty disorienting.
Intentional Disorientation
Jang probably consciously intended to unsettle spectators, mind. Similar to numerous Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from an exuberant rejection for artistic rules on one side, and a profound fury about societal brutality in another respect. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation finding its global voice during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating 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 without charge.
