48) Oldboy

Oldboy (2003)

Director: Chan-wook Park

Starring: Min-sok Choi, Ji-tau Yu, Hye-jeong Kang, Dae-han Ji

I'm happy to admit that I would struggle to maintain a conversation about Korean cinema. It's really not my strong point. I know practically nothing about it, but I don't think I'm alone in that. One Korean film that was on my radar though was Chan-wook Park's Oldboy. I'd seen it pop up in a few places; it is in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and it is #114 in IMBb's Top 250 films. I picked it up on DVD late last year and was all geared up to watch it in early January but ran out of time before I headed down the coast and have only just got back around to it.

One evening, without warning, Oh Dae-su (Choi) is kidnapped. He is kept in solitary confinement with no idea who is imprisoning him or why. After 15 years he is released, again with no explanation. He has been given a suit, a wallet and a phone and despite the fact he is free from his physical cell, his imprisoner still torments him. With the help of Mido (Kang), a young woman he meets shortly after getting out, and with vengeance on his mind, he sets about trying to discover who has imprisoned him, and more importantly, why.

Oldboy is a powerful exploration of the darkest depths of the human sole. This is an archetypal revenge movie. Dae-su comes out of his experience a transformed man, and he is very aware of it. He has become a monster, hell-bent on vengeance, and is unsure whether he will ever be able to become the old Dae-su again. He is consumed by his need for revenge, but comes to find that the man responsible for his imprisonment has a motive equally consuming. The film has an ending which, despite being slightly improbable, suits the tone of the film beautifully as a culminating moment of poetic justice, to end a story filled with physical and emotional anguish.

While in the American cinema, action movies tend to be lowest common denominator stuff, in the Asian cinema, particularly in Hong Kong and Japan, there has developed a rich tradition of quite artistic action films. Oldboy is no exception. Park does some quite adventurous things with the camera in the filming of some of the action sequences. The most obvious example of this is a fight scene which takes place in a corridor which is filmed in one long, continuous, side-on tracking shot which moves up and down the corridor with the action. The shot lasts for a couple of minutes and rather than the quick cutting usually used to emphasise the wild ferociousness of battle, the slow nature of this shot really makes you feel the exhaustion of the characters.

This film has an almost sadomasochistic feel at times. There are a number of shocking scenes; for example the eating of a live octopus (there is no "no animals were harmed in the making of this film" statement at the end of Oldboy) and a tooth pulling scene using a claw hammer. However, these scenes aren't played simply for shock value. Rather, they are all part of the whole. Dae-su's experience has turned him into a man of extremes. Having lived 15 years of nothingness he now experiences the world in overload.

As is the case with most overseas films which attract a bit of attention, the idea of an Oldboy remake attracted the interest of Hollywood. About a year ago there was serious talk of a remake of Oldboy to be directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Will Smith. Since then however it appears that the project has been abandoned, and probably for the best. As much as I love Spielberg, and Will Smith isn't that bad either, this was already a brilliant film (it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004) and I don't think remaking it in Hollywood could have brought anything to the fold. If anything the film would have to be toned down for the American market.

Oldboy is not one for the weak-stomached. It has the feel of a Tarantino or David Fincher film but pushed further in terms of it's sexuality and it's violence than either of those guys would ever be allowed to in the American film industry. This is a film of extremes, with the plot at times being a bit improbable, but still rationally motivated. If you can stomach it though, it is a brilliant film.