Oldboy (Park Chan Wook), Korea

I saw Oldboy last week, a film on my list for the Foreign Language Film Challenge, but not on the Oscar shortlist for last year, as it was released in 2003. Here’s a concise plot summary for Wikipedia:

Oldboy (Hangul: 올드보이, the phonetic transliteration of “old boy”) is a 2003 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook. The film follows the story of one Oh Dae-Su, who is locked in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing his captor’s motives. When he is finally released, Dae Su finds himself still trapped in a web of conspiracy and strangeness. His own quest for vengeance becomes tied in with romance when he falls for an attractive sushi chef. Note -it also stars Kang Hye-Jeong as DaeSu’s love interest, who I recognised from “Welcome To Dongmakgol“, one of the few other Korean movies that I’ve seen.

Its a quite bizarre film, with graphic violence and two particularly gruesome scenes involving the losing of several teeth (by means of a hammer), and the losing of a tongue (by means of a pair of scissors). It’s ultimately a character movie about the quest for vengeance Dae Su goes on, and the quest for vengeance his captor is himself going on. When the reasons for the imprisonment become clear, these opposing quests to exact vengeance are muddied, and you leave with sympathy for all concerned- the loss of life and limbs due to a (quite literally) schoolboy error that led to a tragic event.

Thinking about the movie afterwards, I thought it could even be seen as  a redemptive parable about “talking too much”, although the consequences of this within the film are so extreme that it would be a parable blown out of all proportion with reality- if you talk too much you are not going to be imprisoned for 15 years, and ultimately have very very painful things happen to you. Instead, its a tragi-comedic tale (it is, despite everything, a very funny  movie) with a wonderfully ambiguous ending, and is refreshingly violent- the violence doesn’t distract from, but contributes to the story, and one character- the owner of the prison, is both violently nasty and incredibly funny. As I always say- well worth seeing!

Next Up On Foreign Films- I’m going to replace “Le Graine et Le Moulet” to avoid having two French films, and instead talk about Gomorra, a 2008 crime film that narrowly missed on on Oscar nomination, about crime and the Camorra in Naples, Italy.