🔗 Share this article The New Film Can't Possibly Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Adapted From 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 transformed into creatures. When he adapts existing material, he often selects source material that’s pretty odd too — odder, perhaps, than the version he creates. That was the case regarding the recent Poor Things, an adaptation of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, open-minded spin on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is good, but in a way, his specific style of weirdness and the author's cancel each other out. The Director's Latest Choice His following selection for adaptation also came from the fringes. The source text for Bugonia, his recent collaboration with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a confounding Korean genre stew of science fiction, dark humor, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. The movie is odd less because of its subject matter — although that's far from normal — but for the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and narrative approach. The film is a rollercoaster. A New Wave of Filmmaking It seems there was a creative spirit within the country during that period. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in a boom of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies by emerging talents of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It debuted 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 shares many traits with them: extreme violence, dark comedy, pointed observations, and bending rules. Image: Tartan Video The Story Develops Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who abducts a business tycoon, believing he’s an alien originating in another galaxy, with plans to invade Earth. Early on, the premise unfolds as farce, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. He and his naive entertainer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear adorned with anti-mind-control devices, and employ ointment for defense. Yet they accomplish in abducting inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and taking him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory assembled at a mining site in a rural area, which houses his beehives. Growing Tension Hereafter, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. Byeong-gu straps Kang into a makeshift device and physically abuses him while ranting absurd conspiracy theories, finally pushing his kind girlfriend away. But Kang is no victim; driven solely by the certainty of his elevated status, he is prepared and capable to undergo horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and exert power over the mentally unstable protagonist. At the same time, a comically inadequate manhunt for the abductor commences. The detectives' foolishness and lack of skill echoes Memories of Murder, even if the similarity might be accidental within a story with plotting that seems slapdash and spontaneous. Image: Tartan Video Constant Shifts Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, propelled by its wild momentum, breaking rules without pause, even when one would assume it to calm down or falter. At moments it appears like a serious story about mental health and overmedication; sometimes it’s a symbolic tale on the cruelty of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or a bumbling detective tale. Jang Joon-hwan brings the same level of intense focus throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun is excellent, while Lee Byeong-gu constantly changes among savant prophet, endearing eccentric, and dangerous lunatic depending on the film's ever-changing tone across style, angle, and events. I think that’s a feature, not a flaw, but it might feel pretty disorienting. Designed to Confuse The director likely meant to confuse viewers, mind. In line with various Korean films from that era, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for genre limits in one aspect, and a profound fury about man’s inhumanity to man additionally. It stands as a loud proclamation of a society gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and artistic liberties. It will be fascinating to observe Lanthimos' perspective on the original plot from contemporary America — possibly, a contrasting viewpoint. Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing without charge.