Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on extremely strange movies. The narratives he creates defy convention, like The Lobster, a film where single people need to find love or risk transformed into creatures. When he adapts someone else’s work, he frequently picks source material that’s quite peculiar also — more bizarre, maybe, than his cinematic take. This proved true with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of Alasdair Gray’s wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, sex-positive reimagining of Frankenstein. His film is good, but partially, his unique brand of oddity and the novelist's cancel each other out.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
His following selection to interpret similarly emerged from far out in left field. The basis for Bugonia, his newest collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean fusion of science fiction, black comedy, terror, irony, psychological thriller, and cop drama. The movie is odd less because of its plot — even if that's decidedly unusual — but for the chaotic extremity of its mood and storytelling style. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
There likely existed a creative spirit in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from fresh voices of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released the same year as the director'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’s got a lot in common with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and genre subversion.
The Plot Unfolds
Save the Green Planet! revolves around a troubled protagonist who abducts a corporate CEO, convinced he is an alien hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. At first, that idea unfolds as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like an endearing eccentric. Alongside his childlike entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) wear black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear fitted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ menthol rub in combat. But they do succeed in kidnapping intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to a secluded location, a makeshift laboratory he’s built in a former excavation in the mountains, where he keeps bees.
Growing Tension
Moving forward, the story shifts abruptly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and inflicts pain while declaiming outlandish ideas, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. But Kang is no victim; powered only by the belief of his innate dominance, he can and will to undergo awful experiences in hopes of breaking free and dominate the mentally unstable younger man. At the same time, a comically inadequate police hunt to find the criminal commences. The detectives' foolishness and lack of skill recalls Memories of Murder, even if it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with a plot that appears haphazard and unrehearsed.
Constant Shifts
Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, driven by its manic force, breaking rules underfoot, even when it seems likely it to calm down or falter. Sometimes it seems like a serious story on instability and overmedication; at other times it becomes a fantasy allegory on the cruelty of capitalism; in turns it's a dirty, tense scare-fest or an incompetent police story. The filmmaker brings the same level of feverish dedication throughout, and the performer is excellent, even though the character of Byeong-gu continuously shifts among visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho depending on the film's ever-changing tone in tone, perspective, and plot. I think this is intentional, not a bug, but it might feel pretty disorienting.
Purposeful Chaos
Jang probably consciously intended to disorient his audience, of course. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a joyful, extreme defiance for artistic rules on one side, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty on the other. It stands as a loud proclamation of a society finding its global voice amid new economic and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to witness the director's interpretation of this narrative from contemporary America — perhaps, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online at no cost.
