Even the director’s name was initially mispronounced as “Chan-Wook Park,” and the translation of the title caused considerable confusion. “Old Man,” “Old Boy,” “Classmate” – none of them quite hit the mark. “Oldboy” stands alone, a self-contained entity, a short, sharp word reminiscent of “Banzai,” but with an international flair.
Park Chan-wook (Joint Security Area (2000)) has once again delivered an auteur film, a deeply personal statement. However, these days, such statements only resonate if they achieve mass appeal. We can speak of auteur cinema when the borrowing from others isn’t panicked but deliberate, becoming “context,” and when the issues, however intimate they may seem, prove to be “global.” Revenge is the root of all international terrorism, the individual’s response to global governmental lawlessness. Perhaps the most significant breakthrough of “Oldboy” is the closure of the “West is West, and East is East” divide. The West still lumps “Asian” cinema together, unable to distinguish Hong Kong from China, China from Korea, South Korea from North Korea, or Nepal from Bhutan. The East, however, no longer hides the fact that “among those whose influence propels me forward are figures like Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Austen, Philip K. Dick, Zelazny, and Vonnegut.”
Cultural References and Influences
The Korean director effortlessly navigates both “historical” figures like Hitchcock, Aldrich, and Tarkovsky, and “contemporary” ones like Kaurismäki, Fincher, and Blier. Although his film is based on manga comics by the purely Eastern Tsuchiya Garon, it references “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and the fifteen years in captivity are marked by television news reports of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Britain’s handover of Hong Kong, and world boxing championships. Alongside these, there’s the purely Eastern logic of marking the years by tattooing one’s own hand. A Westerner would mark them on the wall. In the soundtrack, a European, almost antique waltz is juxtaposed with techno music generated by the East. “Oldboy” may be the first example of such free orientation in all of world culture for a purely individual, private settling of scores over a single issue: “Revenge and how to eat it.” With octopuses.
Symbolism and Interpretation
The film is often called the apotheosis of “cinema of cruelty.” A live octopus being eaten, kung fu fights, knives and hammers to the head, teeth pulled out with a nail puller, a severed tongue. However, considering the motif of fried dumplings, the delicately portrayed sex, the presence of a hypnotist, and the ultimate issue of “destroyed intimacy,” the film is not cruel at all, but purely symbolic. In reality, nothing is repulsive to watch if you are against the destruction of intimacy, which is truly unforgivable and breeds revenge, and for “free people in a free country.” In this case, “cinema of cruelty” turns into simply “cinema” – captivating, nerve-wracking, trembling on the cutting edge of today’s filmmaking techniques. The clear three-part structure eliminates any sense of length in the two-hour runtime. Whatever twists and turns Park Chan-wook takes, he carefully presents thesis-antithesis-synthesis: the logic that is embedded in literally every human organism. Whether you ultimately agree with his views on “revenge,” “incest,” and “intimacy” is not the point. What’s more important is that you understand the level at which you need to be thinking today.
The Speed of Comprehension
The story of the unfortunate Oh Dae-su, who spent 15 years in captivity for no reason, then released for no reason, intending to take revenge but drawn into unraveling who exactly to take revenge on, so much so that it suddenly leads to the opposite result – the whole story, in the end, is just an excuse to increase the speed of comprehension. From drinking in celebration of his daughter’s birthday to childhood incestuous misunderstandings 20 years ago and not-so-childish incestuous misunderstandings 15 years later, the speed in “Oldboy” is very high. In its own way, it also leads to the opposite result. It turns out that no chaos instead of logic and confusion instead of morality may arise in the viewer with such an abundance of information. If you digest information faster, the morality of a free person only becomes purer. The very morality that was always considered hammered in and traditional by definition. It is reactive by definition today.
A few years ago, the European Jean Becker made “Élisa” (1995) with a similar pathos. And it cannot be said that Depardieu and Vanessa Paradis are weaker actors than Choi Min-sik (Oh Dae-su) and Kang Hye-jung (Mido). But “Élisa” as a film was a thousand times weaker than “Oldboy,” which ultimately does not rely on pathos – it relies on, roughly speaking, the “noosphere.” For the first time on screen, the entire globe with all its quirks is encompassed by the work of the brain, and this is truly hypnosis – only for the public.