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Greek avant-garde filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is known for distinctly odd movies. His original stories defy convention, like The Lobster, where singletons must partner up or else be being turned into animals. Whenever he interprets existing material, he often selects original works that’s pretty odd as well — stranger, perhaps, than his adaptation of it. Such was the situation for last year's Poor Things, a film version of author Alasdair Gray's gloriously perverse novel, a feminist, open-minded reimagining of Frankenstein. His film is good, but to some extent, his specific style of weirdness and Gray’s balance each other.

Lanthimos’ Next Pick

Lanthimos’ next pick for adaptation also came from the fringes. The basis for Bugonia, his recent team-up with star Emma Stone, is 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean fusion of sci-fi, black comedy, terror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not so much for its subject matter — even if that's highly unconventional — but for the chaotic extremity of its tone and directorial method. It's an insane journey.

A Korean Cinema Explosion

There likely existed a creative spirit across Korea at the start of the millennium. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, belonged to an explosion of daringly creative, groundbreaking movies by emerging talents of filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It came out the same year as the director's Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those two crime masterpieces, but it’s got a lot in common with them: graphic brutality, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and defying expectations.

Narrative Progression

Save the Green Planet! is about an unhinged individual who captures a corporate CEO, convinced he is an alien from the planet Andromeda, with plans to invade Earth. Early on, the premise is presented as slapstick humor, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (the performer known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like an endearing eccentric. He and his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) don black PVC ponchos and absurd helmets encrusted with anti-mind-control devices, and wield ointment for defense. But they do succeed in kidnapping inebriated businessman Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and transporting him to the protagonist's isolated home, a makeshift laboratory he’s built in a former excavation in a rural area, home to his apiary.

Growing Tension

From this point, the narrative turns into increasingly disturbing. Lee fastens Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while spouting absurd conspiracy theories, ultimately forcing his kind girlfriend away. However, Kang isn't helpless; powered only by the conviction of his elevated status, he is prepared and capable to endure horrifying ordeals just to try to escape and exert power over the clearly unwell younger man. Simultaneously, a deeply unimpressive police hunt for the abductor begins. The officers' incompetence and lack of skill recalls Memories of Murder, though the similarity might be accidental in a film with plotting that comes off as rushed and spontaneous.

Constant Shifts

Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its manic force, breaking rules along the way, long after one would assume it to either settle down or lose energy. Occasionally it feels like a serious story on instability and excessive drug use; at other times it becomes a metaphorical narrative about the callousness of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or a sloppy cop movie. Jang Joon-hwan brings the same level of hysterical commitment in all scenes, and the lead actor delivers a standout performance, even though the character of Byeong-gu constantly changes between savant prophet, lovable weirdo, and terrifying psycho in response to the narrative's fluidity in tone, perspective, and plot. It seems this is intentional, not a bug, but it might feel quite confusing.

Intentional Disorientation

It's plausible Jang aimed to disorient his audience, of course. Similar to numerous Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is driven by a gleeful, maximalist disrespect for artistic rules in one aspect, and a quite sincere anger about human cruelty on the other. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a nation gaining worldwide recognition amid new economic and artistic liberties. It promises to be intriguing to observe how Lanthimos views this narrative from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, an opposite perspective.

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Save the Green Planet! can be viewed online for free.