Bugonia Can't Possibly Be More Bizarre Than the Science Fiction Psychodrama It's Adapted From
Aegean surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays are weird, such as The Lobster, a film where singletons need to find love or face being turned into animals. Whenever he interprets someone else’s work, he frequently picks original works that’s quite peculiar too — odder, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation for last year's Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's gloriously perverse novel, an empowering, liberated take on Frankenstein. His film is effective, but to some extent, his particular flavor of eccentricity and the author's neutralize one another.
His New Adaptation
Lanthimos’ next pick to interpret also came from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his newest team-up with star Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean fusion of science fiction, dark humor, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It’s a strange film less because of its subject matter — although that's far from normal — but due to the chaotic extremity of its atmosphere and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster.
The Burst of Korean Film
There must have been a certain energy across Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of a surge of daringly creative, groundbreaking 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 Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! doesn't quite match up as those iconic films, but there are similarities with them: graphic brutality, dark comedy, sharp societal critique, and bending rules.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! is about an unhinged individual who abducts a corporate CEO, thinking he's a being hailing from Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Early on, the premise is played as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Together with his innocent entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) sport plastic capes and absurd helmets adorned with mental shields, and use balm in combat. However, they manage in seizing intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to the protagonist's isolated home, a dilapidated building he’s built on an old mine in a rural area, where he keeps bees.
Shifting Tones
Hereafter, the film veers quickly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and physically abuses him while spouting outlandish ideas, finally pushing the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; fueled entirely by the conviction of his elevated status, he is prepared and capable to undergo terrifying trials in hopes of breaking free and dominate the mentally unstable younger man. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive manhunt to find the criminal gets underway. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness echoes Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a movie with plotting that appears haphazard and improvised.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, driven by its manic force, trampling genre norms underfoot, well past it seems likely it to either settle down or run out of steam. At moments it appears like a serious story about mental health and pharmaceutical abuse; sometimes it’s a metaphorical narrative on the cruelty of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or a bumbling detective tale. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of feverish dedication to every bit, and Shin Ha-kyun delivers a standout performance, although the character of Byeong-gu keeps morphing from wise seer, endearing eccentric, and frightening madman as required by the film's ever-changing tone in tone, perspective, and plot. I think that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it might feel rather bewildering.
Intentional Disorientation
It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, of course. Like so many Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for genre limits on one side, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a culture gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and social changes. One can look forward to observe the director's interpretation of this narrative from a current U.S. standpoint — arguably, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.
