Review by Gabriel Serrano Denis
Back in 2005, one yr after it received the Grand Prix award on the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, DVD copies of a unusual Korean movie titled Oldboy popped up in video shops in North America, notably bearing a critic’s blurb highlighting Quentin Tarantino’s love of the movie. Tarantino’s seal of approval was a enormous draw for moviegoers, starting from the cinephile updated on pageant information to the extra informal movie browser. However, as soon as folks started to look at Oldboy, phrase of mouth shortly advanced from “Tarantino-approved film” to
“one-of-a-kind, must be seen to be believed violent spectacle.”
It was troublesome to interact in a dialogue of the yr’s choices with out somebody citing Oldboy and its stunning story and imagery (to not point out that jaw-dropping hallway struggle!). Now, 20 years after its premiere, Oldboy is again in a 4k restoration from NEON,
trying as soiled as ever and nonetheless as authentic as solely fearless cinema of its caliber can declare to be.
Based on the manga by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi, Oldboy shortly lets its viewers know that they’re not seeing the typical revenge film. We open on Oh Dae-su (Choi Min Sik) chatting with a man who’s about to fall off a constructing, grabbing onto him by his necktie and urging him to take heed to his story. The story of Oh Dae-su is a tragic one: he was kidnapped on his younger daughter’s birthday and imprisoned in an oddly well-furnished room for 15 years. Throughout his keep, he deliberate his revenge on whoever bestowed this depraved torture, coaching his physique to struggle and endure ache whereas he found on the room’s tv that he had additionally been framed for the homicide of his spouse.
Suddenly, he’s let loose, and first encounters the suicidal man on the rooftop. After recounting his present predicament, he units out to search out whoever did this to him, assembly a chef he noticed on his room’s TV alongside the best way and letting her be a part of his quest. Things flip violent, Oh Dae-su eats a dwell squid, and every little thing appears to level to the truth that Oh Dae-su was set free with a function, his torturer toying with him at each flip.
Approaching the story with the exact eye of early David Fincher and the gonzo enhancing of Seijun Suzuki, Park Chan-wook infuses Oldboy with model to the purpose of overflowing, but it by no means overtakes the violent humanity at its core. Like Fincher, Park additionally heightens the absurdity of Oh Dae-su’s state of affairs with bursts of surreal CGI imagery, throwing us deeper and deeper into the character’s psychological state. In this sense, Park’s stylistic impulses are at all times in favor of the characters and their journey into darkness. Chung Chung-hoon’s
cinematography in flip has grow to be emblematic of the illustration of the darkest nooks and crannies of the Korean underworld, and alongside with Park’s eye for element, the staging of motion and violence is so impactful that it by no means calls consideration to itself.
In a means, Park seems to wish to shock us each likelihood he will get. When Oh Dae-su exits a room the place he simply tortured a thug, little do we all know that it’s going to grow to be a one-shot struggle alongside a hallway packed with criminals wielding knives and pipes. Yet regardless of the hyper-stylization and expressionistic framing and lighting, the camerawork and Park’s blocking put the movie’s most significant component entrance and middle always: Choi Min-sik’s deranged and intense efficiency as Oh Dae-su.
No quantity of blood or skull-cracking can put together viewers for the uncooked show of emotion from Choi Min-sik. Most folks will communicate of the very fact he eats a dwell octopus because it writhes and tangles round his mouth, or in regards to the single-take hallway struggle, and whereas these are undoubtedly iconic moments of up to date cinema, Choi Min-sik’s embodiment of Oh Dae-su is equally iconic. His mess of hair and worn-out options, trying like he hasn’t slept within the 15 years he was imprisoned, make for a silhouette that’s unmistakably Oh Dae-su. But it’s Choi Min-sik’s capability to go from deadpan thriller man to rage-filled animal that catches audiences off-guard. And even inside these extremes, he additionally manages to set free bursts of humor as he relishes the struggling he dishes out. That smirk on the finish of the notorious hallway struggle, as piles of males fall over one another within the background after the beating they endured, is probably the shot that encapsulates Choi Min-sik’s dedication to Oh Dae-su. He permits us to root for him when beating down these deserving of his punishment but in addition to see the tortured soul inside and the irreparable injury finished to his humanity.
Every component in Oldboy is in fixed dialog, the violence and darkish humor informing the content material and vice-versa. This is why the movie by no means turns into pure shock worth—Oh Dae-su’s violent revenge is nothing in comparison with the thriller of his seize and launch. As we endure his painful imprisonment and eventual path to revenge, Park permits us to unravel the thriller with him, to the purpose of empathizing with him as he dispatches criminals and torturers. But this proves to be a trick by Park as a result of we all know nothing of Oh Dae-su’s previous and he’ll make rattling certain we’ll all share in his impolite awakening.
It’s a unusual movie within the sense that it turns into extra grounded because it unravels. Rather than going grander and extra stunning, the movie truly turns into extra human, with a nuanced clarification for the ache Oh Dae-su has endured that hits all of the tougher exactly as a result of our ft are on the bottom by the point we’re hit with the sledgehammer revelation. As if the violence and soiled underground dealings weren’t sufficient, Park misleads the viewers and flips the narrative so violently that probably the most stunning second in the entire movie is merely spoken slightly than bludgeoned. This is Park’s best trick: letting us benefit from the carnage provided by style filmmaking to disclose the disgusting aspect of human nature buried beneath the floorboards.
Oldboy is crucial viewing in at present’s cinematic panorama. In a time the place movies have gone extra inward and “realistic”, Oldboy reminds us that the surreal and the stunning can co-exist with the private. Similar to his Korean cohort, Bong Joon-ho, Park can provide us thrills whereas attacking our preconceived concepts of morality within the flip of a scene.
Park continues to shock and innovate, from his follow-up movies Lady Vengeance and Thirst to latest choices The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave (once more taking house a directing prize on the 2022 Cannes Film Festival), exhibiting that his command of style and human drama is actually one in all a type. Never the one to movie or edit any scene conventionally, Park nonetheless shows the inventiveness of the filmmaker who made Oldboy.
Whether you noticed it in 4k or on DVD in 2005, it’s certain to go away a scar. And that ending nonetheless hits tougher than any hammer to the brow.
Oldboy is now out there on 4k UHD from NEON.
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