🔗 Share this article Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Weirder Than the Sci-Fi Psychodrama It's Based On Aegean avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. The narratives he creates are weird, like The Lobster, a film where singletons are compelled to form relationships or else be changed into beasts. In adapting someone else’s work, he tends to draw from source material that’s pretty odd also — more bizarre, possibly, than his adaptation of it. This proved true regarding the recent Poor Things, a film version of Alasdair Gray’s delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, liberated take on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is good, but partially, his specific style of oddity and Gray’s cancel each other out. Lanthimos’ Next Pick His following selection for adaptation similarly emerged from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his recent team-up with leading actress Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of science fiction, black comedy, terror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not so much for its subject matter — though that is highly unconventional — rather because of the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and storytelling style. It’s a wild, wild ride. The Burst of Korean Film It seems there was a creative spirit across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was part of a boom of audacious in style, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out concurrently with the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those celebrated works, but it shares many traits with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, bitter social commentary, and genre subversion. Image: Tartan Video The Plot Unfolds Save the Green Planet! is about a disturbed young man who abducts a corporate CEO, believing he’s an alien originating in another galaxy, plotting an attack. At first, that idea is played as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) sport slick rainwear and bizarre masks adorned with anti-mind-control devices, and wield menthol rub as a weapon. But they do succeed in kidnapping intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building assembled at a mining site in a rural area, home to his apiary. A Descent into Darkness From this point, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and physically abuses him while spouting absurd conspiracy theories, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the belief of his innate dominance, he is prepared and capable to endure awful experiences just to try to escape and dominate the clearly unwell protagonist. At the same time, a notably inept police hunt to find the criminal commences. The officers' incompetence and clumsiness recalls Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental in a movie with plotting that appears haphazard and unrehearsed. Image: Tartan Video A Frenetic Journey Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules without pause, even when one would assume it to calm down or lose energy. Occasionally it feels like a serious story about mental health and overmedication; in parts it transforms into a symbolic tale about the callousness of the economic system; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or a sloppy cop movie. Director Jang maintains a consistent degree of feverish dedication throughout, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, while the protagonist continuously shifts among savant prophet, charming oddball, and dangerous lunatic in response to the narrative's fluidity in mood, viewpoint, and story. It seems it's by design, not a flaw, but it can be quite confusing. Purposeful Chaos The director likely meant to disorient his audience, indeed. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from an exuberant rejection for genre limits in one aspect, and a quite sincere anger about societal brutality on the other. It stands as a loud proclamation of a culture establishing its international presence alongside fresh commercial and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating to observe how Lanthimos views the original plot from contemporary America — arguably, the other end of the telescope. Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing at no cost.