Review #8 – Oldboy

Woo-wee!... I just turned off the DVD player, closing down the amusement park ride that is Oldboy, Chan-wook Park's profoundly disturbing and violent film. And like being shaken-up by an amusement ride, one is both relieved and disappointed when the end comes... let's take this baby up again! or perhaps not.

I stood next to Chan-wook Park at a reception given by the Japanese embassy at the Venice Film Festival; he was there showing [and being rewarded for] Lady Vengeance [Chinjeolhan geumjassi], the third in the trilogy of vengeance films of which Oldboy is the second – the first is Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance [Boksuneun naui geot]. The reception included some very lovely snacks and beverages and many, many speeches in both Japanese and Italian, neither language familiar to either of us [so it seemed]... and it is apparently impolite to eat or drink while the speeches are taking place, so the crowd stood attentively listening, some comprehending, some not so much. We made sympathetic eyebrow gestures at one another, and I looked forward to trying to chat with him, but he was whisked away after about 45 minutes. After about an hour, I took a discreet sip from my glass of wine... I am pretty sure that I got away with it, but I haven't been invited back. I am not sure why I am telling this story, except to suggest that there is a normal human consciousness behind the mayhem that we are confronted with in Oldboy... if I were just trying to puff up my own importance by talking about this event, I would have pointed out that Hayao Miyazaki was at the reception, too, but that would be just dropping names, so I won't.

Oldboy opens with Dae-su Oh on a bench in a police station; it is a rainy night, and he is drunk and beligerent. After his friend, No Joo-hwan, bails him out, he goes outside, phones home from a phone booth, and disappears. We next see him in what looks like a slightly-scruffy motel room, which turns out to be a prison where he is kept for 15 years. When he is let out, the audience has as little insight into the nature of his imprisonment as he does. Without giving too much away, it turns out that he had 5 days to find out who has done this to him and why.

Dae-su Oh has spent his 15 years getting into phenomenal shape, learning stuff from television, and developing an almost-insatiable thirst for vengeance [we could see that coming, couldn't we?]. He is pleasing as a character, because we see his development from a buffoon into a sharply-defined and cunning agent of violent retribution.

This narrative transcends the dully clichéd genre of "one man's revenge" [look to pulp westerns, spy dramas, and many Hollywood star vehicles for examples] because the person responsible for his captivity is a worthy adversary, cunning too, and one step ahead to boot.

This film is extremely violent, with many creative uses of force and common household tools, but the plot dictates the violence, not the other way around... there is nothing unnecessary, and there is nothing particularly easy to watch, or listen to. I have seen all three of the films in this triumverate of retribution and must say that Chan-wook Park is a master of squirm; just when one must look away, the sound of the event predominates... in fact, the camera seems to shy away from the most extreme moments, leaving us with a soundscape that personalizes the violence... if you have to imagine it, then you are complicit in the manufacture of the brutality.

That there is a love story in this film helps viewers to sympathize with Dae-su Oh, even while he is expressing his fury. While the relationship might seem unlikely, we aren't given any reason to question it, and it is this relationship that provides the most chilling twist in this already-labyrinthine story. As more is revealed, both the viewer and Dae-su Oh are kept off-balance... shouldn't more information start providing certainty? Not here, at least for a while.

Oldboy is unlike anything one is likely to see in North America [including a sushi scene that would make the SPCA go on alert], mainly because the filmmaker has the confidence both to let his story reveal itself and to give his audience credit for the intelligence to follow it. Part of the attraction is that one is compelled to try to figure out a puzzle that is impossible to figure out. What a ride.