The New Film Can't Possibly Be More Bizarre Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On

Greek avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in extremely strange movies. His original stories are weird, like The Lobster, a film where unattached individuals are compelled to form relationships or else be changed into beasts. When he adapts existing material, he tends to draw from basis material that’s rather eccentric also — more bizarre, 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, an empowering, open-minded spin on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is good, but partially, his unique brand of weirdness and the novelist's neutralize one another.

Lanthimos’ Next Pick

The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation also came from the fringes. The basis for Bugonia, his recent team-up with leading actress Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean genre stew of science fiction, black comedy, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It’s a strange film not primarily due to what it’s about — even if that's decidedly unusual — but for the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and narrative approach. It’s a wild, wild ride.

A New Wave of Filmmaking

There likely existed something in the air within the country at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of an explosion of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies from fresh voices of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, bitter social commentary, and bending rules.

The Story Develops

Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who captures a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an extraterrestrial from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Initially, the premise is played as slapstick humor, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like an endearing eccentric. Together with his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) wear black PVC ponchos and bizarre masks encrusted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ ointment as a weapon. But they do succeed in seizing drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a ramshackle house/lab constructed on an old mine in the mountains, where he keeps bees.

A Descent into Darkness

Hereafter, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and inflicts pain while spouting bizarre plots, finally pushing the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the belief of his elevated status, he is willing and able to undergo terrifying trials just to try to escape and exert power over the clearly unwell younger man. At the same time, a comically inadequate manhunt for the abductor gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and lack of skill echoes Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental within a story with plotting that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.

Constant Shifts

Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, propelled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules without pause, well past it seems likely it to either settle down or run out of steam. Sometimes it seems like a serious story on instability and excessive drug use; at other times it becomes a metaphorical narrative about the callousness of capitalism; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or a bumbling detective tale. Director Jang maintains a consistent degree of hysterical commitment to every bit, and the performer is excellent, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing from visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho as required by the movie’s constant shifts in tone, perspective, and plot. One could argue that’s a feature, not a bug, but it might feel pretty disorienting.

Intentional Disorientation

Jang probably consciously intended to unsettle spectators, of course. In line with various Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a joyful, extreme defiance for genre limits in one aspect, and a profound fury about human cruelty on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a culture establishing its international presence during emerging financial and artistic liberties. One can look forward to observe the director's interpretation of the same story from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, a contrasting viewpoint.

Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.