🔗 Share this article The New Film Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. His original stories veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, in which singletons must partner up or face transformed into creatures. Whenever he interprets existing material, he tends to draw from basis material that’s quite peculiar too — odder, perhaps, than the version he creates. This proved true for last year's Poor Things, a film version of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, a pro-female, liberated take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but partially, his specific style of eccentricity and the novelist's cancel each other out. Lanthimos’ Next Pick The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret similarly emerged from unexpected territory. The source text for Bugonia, his recent collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean fusion of science fiction, dark humor, terror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It’s a strange film not so much for its plot — though that is decidedly unusual — rather because of the frenzied excess of its tone and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster. The Burst of Korean Film It seems there was a creative spirit in South Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of an explosion of stylistically bold, innovative movies from fresh voices of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted alongside Bong’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 shares many traits with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, pointed observations, and defying expectations. Image: Tartan Video The Plot Unfolds Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who kidnaps a corporate CEO, believing he’s an extraterrestrial originating in another galaxy, intent on world domination. At first, this concept unfolds as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his childlike circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) sport black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear adorned with mental shields, and employ balm for defense. Yet they accomplish in kidnapping drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and transporting him to the protagonist's isolated home, a dilapidated building constructed in a former excavation amid the hills, home to his apiary. Growing Tension Hereafter, the film veers quickly into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and physically abuses him while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the certainty of his elevated status, he is willing and able to subject himself awful experiences in hopes of breaking free and lord it over the disturbed kidnapper. Meanwhile, a notably inept investigation for the kidnapper begins. The cops’ witlessness and clumsiness echoes Memories of Murder, though it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with plotting that comes off as rushed and unrehearsed. Image: Tartan Video Constant Shifts Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, propelled by its wild momentum, defying conventions without pause, well past it seems likely it to calm down or lose energy. Occasionally it feels like a serious story regarding psychological issues and overmedication; sometimes it’s a symbolic tale about the callousness of corporate culture; alternately it serves as a claustrophobic thriller or a sloppy cop movie. The filmmaker brings the same level of hysterical commitment throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun is excellent, even though the protagonist keeps morphing from visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho as required by the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think that’s a feature, not a bug, but it might feel pretty disorienting. Purposeful Chaos It's plausible Jang aimed to unsettle spectators, indeed. Similar to numerous Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is driven by an exuberant rejection for artistic rules on one side, and a genuine outrage about man’s inhumanity to man on the other. It’s a roaring expression of a nation finding its global voice during emerging financial and social changes. It promises to be intriguing to see how Lanthimos views the same story from a current U.S. standpoint — possibly, an opposite perspective. Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.