The Great Grisly
As if 'Gnarly' ever meant full of 'Gnarls'...

This weekend, I found the movie for my Summertime Blues. And yeah, I watched it at home.

What else was I gonna do? Go see The Excorcist: The Beginning? Seriously. What at any point made that movie seem like a good idea? Anyone? Do I see any hands? Anybody want to venture a guess other than the year's counter programming to The Passion of Christ?

Honestly, it was really effing bleak out there at the box office.

So I turn my eye toward things that tend to be more interesting even when they are horribly bad. You know, movies that at least seem like they're trying. The irony being that I work in the industry, and no one yet on anything I've worked on has hoped to make a bad movie. Somewhere along the line it just happens to them. All of them.

(Well, I did like Collaterel...but that was last weekend. Besides, I already said, I don't like talking about things you could easily go out and see yourself.)

Once again, I turned to Korea...and oddly enough, in this case Korea had turned to Japan, for the story anyway. It was the first Korean film to win a major award at the Cannes Film Festival. Some folks attribute that to Tarantino being on the judge's panel, which I think is unfair. It is a revenge story, true, but it definitely managed to do something with it...so let's discuss:

OLDBOY (2003, D. Chan-Wook Park)

The Story: Though wanted in connection with the murder of his wife, Oh Dae-Su doesn't know why he's spent 15 years of his life locked away in a mysterious prison that resembles a motel room. When he's suddenly released, he's hellbent on taking revenge, but has no idea where to direct his anger. Then the mysterious cell phone he's handed starts to ring.

The Review: First off, you know I had to kind of like this movie because I won't just tell you what happened. I want you to see it. I want you to experience it. You may never do that, and if you don't, then you'll never know what happened. That's your problem. Though if you hit the local movie store you may not be able to find it, but not to worry, supposedly it's coming out here. And if what I've read is true and we really luck out, Hollywood's gonna remake a nice anglo-friendly version of it. (That's a rant in and of itself: If you can't see a movie without a bunch Hollywood movie stars or one where you might have to read some, then you ain't got much business hanging out around these parts.)

Anyhow.

What set this movie apart from your average revenge flick is it's incredilby absurdist nearly Kafkaesque story elements. While Joseph K. in The Trial is accused of a crime and is forced to defend himself without ever knowing his crime, Oh Dae-Su's story plays out a little more movieworld style. Then again, it has to. After all, though The Trial is a fascinating read, it never has the satisfying explanation or climax that most movies require. (I liked Orson Welle's version with Anthony Perkins, but more because it was beautiful to watch than it was a satisfying story.) In any event, Oldboy is engaging just for starting in such strange territory. Each time I felt I had figured out where the story would go next...well, it would go there...but there would be more to it than I had thought out, and those new layers would shift the story.

Also, unlike many revenge themed stories, this one really sets up why this man would now be so determined to get his own brand of justice. He's lost his wife and he's lost his daughter, but that's where most of these movies start. He's lost 15 years of his life. That's a little longer than most, so it's a start. Really, it boils down to the long lists of people he chalks up whom he's hurt or wronged in his life. The truth is that that list is a greater reflection of his own self-loathing. When we first see him, he's a drunken mess at a police station when he should be at home for his daughter's birthday. Had he been where he should have doing what he should have, he wouldn't have lost anything.

Unfortunately, (and again, I'm not going to ruin anything) his revenge does not lead to the redemption that one would hope. This is another place where this movie differs.

More unfortunately, I've painted myself into a corner. I'd really love to talk about what the real device is that gets this whole story going which of course you don't discover until the finale. It puts that mess The Butterfly Effect to shame for exploring a similar idea, theoretcially. (No, Oldboy doesn't have a bunch of zipping around recreating time...it has more to do with the effect itself, the idea of which existed long before Ashton Kutcher.) I guess I will warn you that this movie is determined no to be happy...satisfying, yes...happy, no.

IF YOU CAN'T RESIST KNOWING MORE: Ever read Oedipus Rex? Then you have a good idea...not the exact idea...but a good one.

What also sets this movie apart from other Korean films is that it's one of the first I've seen (and I've only seen a handful) that managed a consistent pace and tone throughout. There were a few slow moments, but not the kind where I was checking my watch or pausing it to wash my windows. The ending has that penchant for dragging out the melodrama, and I'll admit that I'm a bad judge of how bad it is as I've gotten used to it. Then again, that also has to do with the tone. Now, many Asian films are bad about this, but the Koreans seem to have a flair for it: those weird shifts where things get real heavy in the middle of light comedy, or funny amidst sad, sad, drama. Oldboy certainly didn't have a light tone, but nor was it full of heavy handed drama despite the grimness. It played it serious, but could crack a joke without it seeming way out of place.

As for the regular review stuff, the actors all did a solid job. Choi Min-Sik manages to radiate a dogged relentlessness amidst a sense of utter hopelessness. Yu Ji-Tae fits the role of the ultra-slick sadistic villain, though he can't help coming across as a little too lightweight compared to Min-Sik's abused hero. His role is further compromised by the playing out of the plot elements which give him some depth though it's almost too little too late. The production design is at once sharp and nasty bringing out a sort of dirty hyper-reality. The camerawork is strong.

Of particular interest to me was the fight choreography. Now those of you who've seen it may be saying: What choreography? Well that's my point. It wasn't polished. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't kung fu. It was at once painfully realistic and at the same time a sort of comic book brutality. There's isn't a whole lot of fisticuffs in the movie, but what little there was was memorable. (The hallway scene notwithstanding, I'm thinking of Dae-Su getting up from being knocked on his @$$ to then proceed to whoop some @$$.)

All in all, I would argue that as this movie won the Grand Prix at Cannes, to my mind it should've won the Palme d'Or. With the flurry of crap, politics, and facts/lies issues surrounding Farehnheit 911...well, let's just say that to me, it's about movies. Not that documentaries don't count. I just get wary of things winning awards that are flavors of the moment or too singularly narrowed to a specific time frame. It's the difference in timelessness between Errol Morris's Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control and Michael Moore's movie. To my mind, though it may be apples to oranges, Oldboy's got more staying power. Guess it just depends on your priorities.

Cheers.