Bugonia Isn't Likely to Be Stranger Than the Sci-Fi Psychological Drama It's Inspired By

Aegean surrealist director Yorgos Lanthimos has built a reputation on highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays veer into the bizarre, such as The Lobster, where single people must partner up or face being turned into animals. In adapting another creator's story, he frequently picks original works that’s quite peculiar too — odder, maybe, than his cinematic take. Such was the situation regarding the recent Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, liberated spin on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation is effective, but partially, his particular flavor of oddity and the author's cancel each other out.

His New Adaptation

The filmmaker's subsequent choice to interpret also came from the fringes. The basis for Bugonia, his recent team-up with acclaimed performer Emma Stone, comes from 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a perplexing Korean mix of styles of sci-fi, dark humor, horror, satire, dark psychodrama, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not so much for its subject matter — though that is highly unconventional — but for the frenzied excess of its atmosphere and narrative approach. It's an insane journey.

The Burst of Korean Film

There must have been something in the air in South Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan, was included in an explosion of daringly creative, boundary-pushing movies from a new generation of filmmakers including Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released the same year as Bong’s Memories of Murder and the filmmaker's Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those iconic films, but there are similarities with them: extreme violence, morbid humor, bitter social commentary, and genre subversion.

Narrative Progression

Save the Green Planet! is about a disturbed young man who captures a chemical-company executive, believing he’s an extraterrestrial from the planet Andromeda, plotting an attack. Initially, the premise is presented as broad comedy, and the young man, Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun from Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), seems like an endearing eccentric. He and his naive acrobat girlfriend Su-ni (the star) wear plastic capes and ridiculous headgear encrusted with mental shields, and wield balm in combat. Yet they accomplish in kidnapping drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (the performer) and bringing him to a secluded location, a dilapidated building assembled at a mining site amid the hills, home to his apiary.

Growing Tension

Moving forward, the narrative turns into ever more unsettling. The protagonist ties Kang onto a crude contraption and physically abuses him while declaiming absurd conspiracy theories, eventually driving his kind girlfriend away. Yet the captive is resilient; driven solely by the certainty of his innate dominance, he is willing and able to endure terrifying trials to attempt an exit and dominate the disturbed protagonist. Meanwhile, a notably inept investigation to find the criminal begins. The detectives' foolishness and incompetence is reminiscent of Memories of Murder, although it’s not so clearly intentional in a movie with a plot that seems slapdash and unrehearsed.

Constant Shifts

Save the Green Planet! plunges forward relentlessly, fueled by its manic force, breaking rules without pause, well past it seems likely it to calm down or lose energy. At moments it appears like a serious story about mental health and overmedication; in parts it transforms into a fantasy allegory regarding the indifference of capitalism; in turns it's a claustrophobic thriller or an incompetent police story. Jang Joon-hwan brings the same level of intense focus in all scenes, and the lead actor is excellent, although the protagonist keeps morphing among wise seer, lovable weirdo, and dangerous lunatic in response to the film's ever-changing tone in tone, perspective, and plot. It seems this is intentional, not a flaw, but it may prove quite confusing.

Intentional Disorientation

The director likely meant to disorient his audience, indeed. Like so many Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by a joyful, extreme defiance for stylistic boundaries on one side, and a profound fury about human cruelty on the other. It’s a roaring expression of a society gaining worldwide recognition during emerging financial and social changes. It will be fascinating to witness how Lanthimos views this narrative from a current U.S. standpoint — perhaps, the other end of the telescope.

Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing without charge.