Bugonia Can't Possibly Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Inspired By

Aegean surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. The narratives he creates defy convention, such as The Lobster, where single people are compelled to form relationships or else be being turned into animals. When he adapts existing material, he frequently picks basis material that’s pretty odd also — more bizarre, maybe, than the version he creates. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of the novel by Alasdair Gray delightfully aberrant novel, a feminist, open-minded take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but in a way, his specific style of eccentricity and Gray’s balance each other.

Lanthimos’ Next Pick

The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret was likewise drawn from unexpected territory. The original work for Bugonia, his newest team-up with star Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean genre stew of science fiction, black comedy, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to its subject matter — although that's highly unconventional — rather because of the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and directorial method. It’s a wild, wild ride.

The Burst of Korean Film

It seems there was a certain energy in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by 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 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: graphic brutality, morbid humor, pointed observations, and defying expectations.

The Story Develops

Save the Green Planet! is about an unhinged individual who captures a chemical-company executive, convinced he is an extraterrestrial hailing from Andromeda, plotting an attack. Early on, the premise is played as farce, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his naive circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (the actress Hwang) don black PVC ponchos and bizarre masks fitted with psyche-protection gear, and use balm for defense. But they do succeed in seizing inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to a secluded location, a ramshackle house/lab he’s built in a former excavation in the mountains, home to his apiary.

Growing Tension

Hereafter, the story shifts abruptly into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while ranting bizarre plots, finally pushing the gentle Su-ni away. However, Kang isn't helpless; powered only by the certainty of his elevated status, he is prepared and capable to endure awful experiences to attempt an exit and exert power over the clearly unwell younger man. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive manhunt for the kidnapper gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and clumsiness is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although it’s not so clearly intentional within a story with a plot that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.

Unrelenting Pace

Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, fueled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules without pause, well past it seems likely it to either settle down or lose energy. At moments it appears like a serious story about mental health and excessive drug use; at other times it becomes a metaphorical narrative on the cruelty of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan maintains a consistent degree of hysterical commitment in all scenes, and the performer shines, although Lee Byeong-gu continuously shifts among visionary, lovable weirdo, and dangerous lunatic as required by the film's ever-changing tone in tone, perspective, and plot. One could argue that’s a feature, not a mistake, but it can be quite confusing.

Purposeful Chaos

Jang probably consciously intended to unsettle spectators, mind. Like so many Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! draws energy from an exuberant rejection for genre limits partly, and a profound fury about human cruelty in another respect. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a culture establishing its international presence alongside fresh commercial and social changes. It promises to be intriguing to observe Lanthimos' perspective on the same story through a modern Western lens — arguably, an opposite perspective.

Save the Green Planet! is available to stream without charge.