🔗 Share this article The New Film Couldn't 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 veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, in which single people need to find love or risk being turned into animals. Whenever he interprets another creator's story, he frequently picks original works that’s pretty odd also — more bizarre, maybe, than his cinematic take. Such was the situation for last year's Poor Things, a screen interpretation of the novel by Alasdair Gray wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, open-minded reimagining of Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is good, but in a way, his specific style of weirdness and the author's neutralize one another. Lanthimos’ Next Pick The filmmaker's subsequent choice for adaptation was likewise drawn from far out in left field. The basis for Bugonia, his newest project alongside leading actress Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean genre stew of sci-fi, dark humor, terror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It's an unusual piece not primarily due to what it’s about — though that is highly unconventional — but due to the wild intensity of its tone and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster. A New Wave of Filmmaking There must have been a creative spirit in South Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, the work of Jang Joon-hwan, was part of a surge of daringly creative, innovative movies from a new generation of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted alongside the director's Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those two crime masterpieces, but it shares many traits with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, sharp societal critique, and bending rules. Image: Tartan Video The Plot Unfolds Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who kidnaps a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an alien from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Early on, this concept is played as slapstick humor, and the lead, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), comes across as a lovably deluded fool. Alongside his naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the star) don plastic capes and bizarre masks adorned with psyche-protection gear, and wield menthol rub in combat. However, they manage in kidnapping intoxicated executive Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to a secluded location, a ramshackle house/lab constructed in a former excavation in a rural area, which houses his beehives. A Descent into Darkness Moving forward, the story shifts abruptly into ever more unsettling. Lee fastens Kang into a makeshift device and inflicts pain while ranting outlandish ideas, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. However, Kang isn't helpless; driven solely by the belief of his own superiority, he is willing and able to undergo terrifying trials to attempt an exit and lord it over the disturbed younger man. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive investigation to find the criminal commences. The cops’ witlessness and incompetence recalls Memories of Murder, though it’s not so clearly intentional in a film with plotting that seems slapdash and unrehearsed. Image: Tartan Video Constant Shifts Save the Green Planet! continues racing ahead, propelled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, long after you might expect it to find stability or lose energy. Sometimes it seems to be a drama on instability and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a symbolic tale on the cruelty of capitalism; in turns it's a grimy basement horror or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan applies equal measure of intense focus throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun is excellent, although Lee Byeong-gu continuously shifts from visionary, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho as required by the film's ever-changing tone in tone, perspective, and plot. I think this is intentional, not a flaw, but it might feel rather bewildering. Purposeful Chaos It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, of course. In line with various Korean films of its time, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for stylistic boundaries partly, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty in another respect. It’s a roaring expression of a culture gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and cultural freedoms. It will be fascinating to observe how Lanthimos views the same story from a current U.S. standpoint — possibly, an opposite perspective. Save the Green Planet! is available to stream for free.