Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Based On
Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. The narratives he creates veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, where single people must partner up or risk being turned into animals. When he adapts another creator's story, he tends to draw from original works that’s rather eccentric also — more bizarre, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of the novel by Alasdair Gray gloriously perverse novel, an empowering, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but partially, his unique brand of weirdness and the author's neutralize one another.
His New Adaptation
The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret was likewise drawn from far out in left field. The basis for Bugonia, his newest project alongside star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, irony, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not so much for its subject matter — though that is decidedly unusual — rather because of the chaotic extremity of its tone and storytelling style. The film is a rollercoaster.
The Burst of Korean Film
It seems there was a certain energy within the country in the early 2000s. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a surge of audacious in style, groundbreaking movies from a new generation of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released concurrently with Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn’t on the same level as those celebrated works, but there are similarities with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, pointed observations, and defying expectations.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! is about a troubled protagonist who kidnaps a corporate CEO, convinced he is an extraterrestrial from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Early on, that idea unfolds as broad comedy, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his innocent acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) don black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets encrusted with mental shields, and wield balm for defense. Yet they accomplish in abducting drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and transporting him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory assembled in a former excavation in a rural area, where he keeps bees.
Growing Tension
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang onto a crude contraption and inflicts pain while ranting bizarre plots, eventually driving his kind girlfriend away. However, Kang isn't helpless; fueled entirely by the belief of his elevated status, he can and will to undergo horrifying ordeals in hopes of breaking free and exert power over the disturbed younger man. Meanwhile, a notably inept police hunt to find the criminal commences. The detectives' foolishness and incompetence is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a film with a narrative that seems slapdash and spontaneous.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, propelled by its wild momentum, breaking rules without pause, well past it seems likely it to either settle down or falter. At moments it appears as a character study about mental health and excessive drug use; sometimes it’s a metaphorical narrative on the cruelty of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or a sloppy cop movie. The filmmaker brings the same level of hysterical commitment to every bit, and Shin Ha-kyun shines, while Lee Byeong-gu continuously shifts between visionary, charming oddball, and frightening madman as required by the narrative's fluidity across style, angle, and events. I think that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it might feel rather bewildering.
Intentional Disorientation
Jang probably consciously intended to confuse viewers, indeed. In line with various Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a joyful, extreme defiance for stylistic boundaries in one aspect, and a genuine outrage about man’s inhumanity to man on the other. It stands as a loud proclamation of a culture establishing its international presence amid new economic and artistic liberties. It will be fascinating to witness how Lanthimos views this narrative through a modern Western lens — perhaps, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! is available to stream at no cost.
