The Korean film Oldboy by Park Chan-wook originally came out 20 years ago. Now it’s been restored and remastered, and is returning to theaters. KUNC film critic Howie Movshovitz, who teaches film at the University of Colorado Denver, said Oldboy may be even more poignant now than it was in 2003.
Back in 2003, some people disliked Oldboy for its violence while others believed the movie’s brutal imagery and storyline were not unjustified, rather making up a rough and disturbing but important vision of the world we live in. The heart of the story is about vengeance, but at the time, director Park Chan-wook said that while his film does not praise vengeance itself, it shows that if we do not find useful ways to express anger and revenge, those feelings will erupt in profoundly destructive ways.
Park noted that anger was rampant in the world in 2003. The world has grown angrier since then, which I think makes Oldboy an important film now. Early in the movie, Oh Dae-su, played with a ferocious performance by Choi Min-shik, ends up in a police station, where he acts out and rants about himself. A friend bails him out, but then Oh suddenly vanishes and eventually shows up in some kind of prison, poking his head out of the small opening at the bottom of the cell door and screaming at a person who’s delivered food through that opening. Soon, you learn that Oh will be there for 15 years. There’s no legal procedure, no court, no sentencing – no explanation. He’s just there. Periodically, a valium gas permeates the cell, and when he’s unconscious, his cell is cleaned and his clothes are changed.
Oh has a television and he watches the news, which is mostly about crime. But the TV also registers events like the death of Princess Diana and the British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Oh has a desk with paper and a fountain pen so he can write his prison memoir. Then, abruptly, Oh is dumped outside a massive apartment building in a red box. He emerges, and sets out to uncover what’s happened to him and wreak his vengeance on whoever is responsible.
Director Park said Oldboy is ultimately about recovering oneself. In that way it’s like a lot of Western prison writing, which often describes a prisoner’s growth from misery and hatred to some version of transcendent understanding. But the journey here is harsh, and you have to have the stomach for events and images designed to shock the audience. If you’ve seen the charming documentary My Octopus Teacher, you may find one scene in particular quite hard to swallow.
The world of Oldboy is often a putrid blue-green. The action mostly takes place indoors; the film makes you yearn for the outdoors and for sunlight. Oldboy feels claustrophobic and rancid, and Oh Dae-su’s life and mood feel like he’s caught in a world of constant violence and malice, with no way out. As he says, life in this bigger prison is no better than the small cell he lived in for 15 years.
But when you get inside Oldboy, Park Chan-wook’s vision grows clearer. Oh Dae-su’s experience is entirely unfair and random and absurd – it’s like Kafka’s story The Trial, where nothing makes coherent sense. Oh’s release also makes no sense, and he’s set free – if that’s the word – into a kind of disfigured society with no tools for making sense of things and no avenues to find anything like justice or peace.
Filmmaker Park Chan-wook has said that the real subject of Oldboy is salvation. If that’s true, like any genuine salvation it’s hard-earned and the character Oh Dae-su has to find in himself a depth of acceptance that few filmmakers have the nerve or the talent to create on screen.
