Bugonia Couldn't Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By
Greek surrealist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. His original stories defy convention, like The Lobster, where single people need to find love or face being turned into animals. When he adapts someone else’s work, he often selects source material that’s rather eccentric also — more bizarre, possibly, than the version he creates. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's delightfully aberrant novel, an empowering, sex-positive spin on Frankenstein. Lanthimos’ version is good, but to some extent, his particular flavor of eccentricity and Gray’s neutralize one another.
Lanthimos’ Next Pick
His following selection to interpret also came from the fringes. The source text for Bugonia, his latest team-up with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, black comedy, horror, irony, dark psychodrama, and police procedural. It's an unusual piece not so much for its plot — although that's far from normal — but for the chaotic extremity of its mood and directorial method. It's an insane journey.
A New Wave of Filmmaking
It seems there was something in the air across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of a boom of stylistically bold, boundary-pushing movies from fresh voices of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out concurrently with Bong’s Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those celebrated works, but it’s got a lot in common with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, sharp societal critique, and defying expectations.
The Story Develops
Save the Green Planet! focuses on a troubled protagonist who captures a business tycoon, thinking he's a being hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, that idea is presented as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. Together with his childlike entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (the star) don plastic capes and ridiculous headgear fitted with anti-mind-control devices, and employ balm in combat. Yet they accomplish in abducting drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (actor Baek) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a dilapidated building assembled on an old mine amid the hills, where he keeps bees.
A Descent into Darkness
Moving forward, the film veers quickly into something more grotesque. Lee fastens Kang onto a crude contraption and subjects him to harm while ranting outlandish ideas, eventually driving his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the conviction of his elevated status, he is willing and able to endure terrifying trials just to try to escape and dominate the mentally unstable protagonist. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive manhunt to find the criminal gets underway. The detectives' foolishness and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental within a story with plotting that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.
A Frenetic Journey
Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, even when you might expect it to calm down or run out of steam. Occasionally it feels as a character study about mental health and pharmaceutical abuse; in parts it transforms into a metaphorical narrative on the cruelty of the economic system; alternately it serves as a dirty, tense scare-fest or a bumbling detective tale. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of feverish dedication in all scenes, and the performer is excellent, while the character of Byeong-gu continuously shifts among visionary, charming oddball, and frightening madman in response to the movie’s constant shifts in mood, viewpoint, and story. I think it's by design, not a bug, but it may prove pretty disorienting.
Designed to Confuse
The director likely meant to disorient his audience, indeed. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for genre limits on one side, and a genuine outrage about human cruelty on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation gaining worldwide recognition alongside fresh commercial and artistic liberties. One can look forward to observe the director's interpretation of the same story from contemporary America — arguably, the other end of the telescope.
Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online without charge.
