Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on extremely strange movies. The narratives he creates veer into the bizarre, for instance The Lobster, a film where singletons must partner up or face being turned into animals. Whenever he interprets someone else’s work, he tends to draw from original works that’s pretty odd also — more bizarre, possibly, than his cinematic take. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a film version of the novel by Alasdair Gray delightfully aberrant novel, a pro-female, sex-positive reimagining of Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version stands strong, but partially, his specific style of weirdness and the novelist's balance each other.
The Director's Latest Choice
Lanthimos’ next pick for adaptation also came from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his recent project alongside star Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and police procedural. The movie is odd not so much for what it’s about — although that's decidedly unusual — rather because of the wild intensity of its atmosphere and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
The Burst of Korean Film
There must have been something in the air within the country during that period. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to a boom of daringly creative, innovative movies by emerging talents of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted 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 it’s got a lot in common with them: extreme violence, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and defying expectations.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who captures a corporate CEO, believing he’s an alien from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. At first, that idea is played as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as an endearing eccentric. Together with his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) don black PVC ponchos and bizarre masks adorned with psyche-protection gear, and wield menthol rub for defense. However, they manage in seizing inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building he’s built at a mining site in the mountains, home to his apiary.
A Descent into Darkness
Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. Byeong-gu straps Kang onto a crude contraption and subjects him to harm while declaiming bizarre plots, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; driven solely by the certainty of his innate dominance, he can and will to endure horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and exert power over the mentally unstable kidnapper. Meanwhile, a comically inadequate police hunt for the abductor gets underway. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, even if it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with plotting that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.
Unrelenting Pace
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, driven by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, even when you might expect it to find stability or falter. Sometimes it seems as a character study about mental health and pharmaceutical abuse; sometimes it’s a metaphorical narrative regarding the indifference of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of feverish dedication in all scenes, and Shin Ha-kyun delivers a standout performance, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing among wise seer, charming oddball, and terrifying psycho depending on the film's ever-changing tone across style, angle, and events. One could argue that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it might feel quite confusing.
Intentional Disorientation
It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, indeed. Similar to numerous Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a joyful, extreme defiance for genre limits on one side, and a genuine outrage about societal brutality additionally. It’s a roaring expression of a society establishing its international presence amid new economic and social changes. One can look forward to see the director's interpretation of the same story through a modern Western lens — possibly, an opposite perspective.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
