Greenscreening #51 • Oldboy (2003) • South Korean Cinema

Visceral, lyrical, and with several of the greatest twists in film history, Park Chan-wook's cult classic delivers a singular cinematic experience.

Aug 10, 2024

Oldboy (2003), directed by Park Chan-wook

After being inexplicably imprisoned for 15 years, Oh Dae Su (Choi Min-sik) is suddenly released and given five days to uncover the identity and motive of his captor. Driven by a relentless quest for vengeance, he delves into a dark and twisted journey, revealing shocking truths about his past and the devastating consequences of his actions.

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Why Oldboy?

Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) is an absolute masterclass in cinematic style. Long takes, dynamic editing, meticulous production design, innovating framing, expressionistic use of color, a powerful score and shocking, stylized violence make the film an immersive, visceral, unforgettable experience. Not for the faint of heart, but the film delivers an almost Shakespearean meditation on fate and vengeance.

Oldboy heralded the ascent of the New Korean Cinema of the early 2000s. Driven by political liberalization, economic growth, and a new generation of bold filmmakers, this movement produced some of the most innovative and influential films of this century. The New Korean Cinema is marked by deft genre-blending, complex characters, social commentary, and universal themes, with no film more enthralling than Oldboy.

Oldboy was remade by director Spike Lee a decade after its initial release. This was part of a growing trend of Hollywood remaking films from the 1990s through today, particularly hits from overseas. These remakes reflect one of the movie industry’s oldest ongoing dilemmas: how to best present innovative non-English films to English-speaking audiences? Do mainstream movie audiences in the West require familiar Hollywood faces and English language dialogue, or will they embrace foreign-language films, new actors from around the world, and stories that don’t follow the familiar patterns?

As we saw with the New Mexican Cinema, directors from the New Korean Cinema, including Park and Bong Joon-Ho, have risen to the top of the industry and been able to consistently produce auteur films both in Korea and in Hollywood. In 2020, Hollywood honored Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite with Best Picture at the Oscars.

Oh Dae-su sits down for his first meal after being released from captivity.

Oldboy

“You can’t find the right answer if you ask the wrong questions.” - Lee Woo-jin in Oldboy.

Not long after being released from a mysterious kidnapping and 15-year imprisonment, Oh Dae-su enters a sushi restaurant and orders something alive to eat. The chef presents him with a live octopus.

He grabs the writhing octopus with his hands, its tentacles squirming and clinging to his face. With a fierce, almost primal intensity, he bites into the still-moving creature. The octopus’ tentacles wrap around his face and struggles as Oh Dae-su powers through it.

As a viewer, it’s the moment that you’re either deciding to switch off the film, or you’re along for the ride. Consider this: Choi Min-sik, a vegetarian, reportedly ate three or four live octopuses during filming to achieve the perfect shot.

Oldboy is a tough, uncompromising, uncomfortable film, like much of the resurgent South Korean cinema of the 2000s.

The film is the second in Park’s “Revenge Trilogy,” and a loose adaptation of a popular manga, Old Boy. It’s a deep meditation on the destructive cycle of vengeance, as both Dae-su and his captor, Lee Woo-jin, are motivated by vengeance and become monstrous in their pursuit of it.

The film was a deliberate move by Park towards more general, classical themes, after launching his career with socially conscious films.

Because I’d already dealt with the division of the Korean peninsula in Joint Security Area and class conflict within South Korea in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, I didn’t want to handle yet another timely social issue in my next work. I wanted to tell a story that was more foundational, primordial, and universal. And I wanted to go romanticist, rather than realistic. I wanted to tell a story about fate. - Park Chan-wook, 2023

Imprisonment and freedom are key symbols and themes in Oldboy. Imprisonment extends beyond Dae-su’s physical confinement to include psychological and emotional captivity. Even after his release, Dae-su remains trapped by his need for answers and revenge, unable to move beyond his trauma. And as we learn over the course of the film, the antagonist Woo-jin is also a prisoner of his past and his memories. The film explores whether actions can bring redemption or even peace, and whether being driven by the past fates us to act a certain way in the future.

Park is also interested in the ways identity gets reshaped by imprisonment and by the desire for vengeance. At the start of the film, Dae-su is a carefree man - so carefree that he gets too drunk and misses his daughter’s birthday party. Through his imprisonment, his physical appearance changes. Once released, his behavior becomes more animalistic, particularly in scenes like eating the live octopus, an intense hallway fight (more about this shortly), and in his willingness to sadistically torture someone to get information.

Dae-su the drunken family man, before his captivity.

Oldboy thrives on moral ambiguity. In the same way that Dae-su is manipulated by his captor, Park plays with audience identification and manipulation. We instinctively root for Dae-su, but he’s an antihero, and his actions are at times deplorable.

Throughout the series, we’ve looked at film language and how the best directors deploy it strategically to tell their stories. Park Chan-wook is one of the best there is.

There is a hallway fight scene, shot in a single continuous take, following Dae-su as he battles numerous adversaries in a narrow corridor. The fluid movement of the camera, combined with unbroken choreography, creates an intense, immersive experience. We feel Dae-su’s determination and resilience, as well as his fatigue during the scene. Taken on its own, it’s just a terrific action sequence. But the framing and the camera’s slow left to right tracking with the action also reminds us of a side-scrolling video game. Park is emphasizing the theme of fate; Dae-su is like a video game character, and who’s got the controller?

The film’s color palette often shifts to reflect the psychological states of the characters as well as the tone of the narrative, with purple and green serving as visual motifs. Purple, often associated with luxury and power, appears in key scenes involving Woo-jin, symbolizing his control and the opulence of his life. Green, present in Dae-su’s prison cell, a scene of hypnosis, and in much of the film’s desaturated cinematography, symbolizes both the captivity and the psychological manipulation he endures.

Purple and green. The purple box which contains the secret Dae-su has been searching for.

The film’s sound design and score play crucial roles in the film. Jo Yeong-wook’s haunting musical score featured pieces named after classic Hollywood films, including “The Searchers,” “In a Lonely Place,” “Out of the Past,” and “Kiss Me Deadly.” Jo and Park also use classical music during violent scenes, such as Vivaldi’s "Winter," creating a collision of beauty and brutality. And the sound effects are incredibly effective; while the film is quite violent visually, the sound effects are actually doing most of the work, like a horror film.

Oldboy and New Korean Cinema

Oldboy landed like a force of nature. It won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival and signaled the arrival of New Korean Cinema on the world stage, a movement that had been building for the previous decade.

The New Korean Cinema emerged from a confluence of socio-political, economic, and cultural factors that transformed South Korea's film industry into a global powerhouse.

After the Korean War, the industry faced numerous challenges, including political censorship and economic hardships. However, the 1980s and 1990s marked a renaissance period, driven by deregulation, a growing domestic market, and a new generation of filmmakers willing to explore diverse and often controversial themes.

The end of military rule in South Korea in the late 1980s and the subsequent democratization led to a relaxation of censorship laws. In 1996, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that government film censorship was unconstitutional. This newfound freedom allowed filmmakers to explore previously taboo subjects, including political corruption, social issues, and human rights.

South Korea’s rapid economic growth during the 1990s increased disposable income and fueled a burgeoning entertainment industry. The government also recognized the potential of cultural exports, including films, leading to investments in the film industry and support for international film festivals. The Korean government implemented several reforms to support the local film industry, such as the Screen Quota System, which mandated that cinemas show domestic films for a certain number of days each year. This policy protected and promoted South Korean films in the domestic market.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, South Korean cinema began to gain international recognition through what is often referred to as the New Korean Cinema movement. Directors such as Kim Ki-duk, Bong Joon-ho, and Park Chan-wook emerged as leading figures, bringing fresh perspectives and innovative techniques to the industry. This period was characterized by a willingness to tackle bold narratives, complex characters, and stylistic experimentation, which resonated with both domestic audiences and international critics.

New Korean Cinema is known for its seamless blending of genres. Films often incorporate elements of drama, thriller, horror, comedy, and romance, creating unique and unpredictable narratives. For example, Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006) combines monster movie tropes with family drama and political satire. And Oldboy blends a wide range of genres into its neo-noir narrative, including science fiction, the grindhouse/exploitation film, horror, superhero/comic book, the Western, and even elements of Shakespearean and Greek tragedy.

Many films in this movement feature explicit and stylized violence. This approach to violence is not gratuitous but serves to heighten the impact of the narrative, and reflects the psyche of a society living with the constant tension of a hostile neighbor to the north, and with the memory of decades of military rule. Oldboy (2003) is renowned for its graphic fight scenes and intense depictions of revenge, which are integral to the film's exploration of vengeance and identity.

Films often feature multi-dimensional characters who navigate morally ambiguous situations. This complexity allows for rich, character-driven stories that challenge the audience's perceptions of right and wrong. As we’ve discussed, Oldboy follows an antihero in his pursuit of revenge. In Memories of Murder (2003), Bong Joon-ho presents flawed detectives who struggle with their own limitations and ethical dilemmas while investigating a serial killer case.

Many Korean films address social issues, historical events, and political themes, reflecting South Korea’s turbulent history and contemporary challenges. These films often serve as critiques of societal norms and government policies. For example, Park’s Joint Security Area (2000) explores the gray zone of soldiers working along the DMZ, as North Korean and South Korean soldiers are forced to cover up a secret friendship after an accidental killing, and Jang Joon-hwan's Save the Green Planet! (2003) uses science fiction and dark comedy to comment on social alienation and the consequences of unchecked authority.

Korean filmmakers often experiment with non-linear storytelling, flashbacks, and fragmented narratives. Peppermint Candy (1999) by Lee Chang-dong tells the story of a man's life in reverse chronological order, revealing the events that led to his tragic end. Oldboy features an extended flashback; Park’s later work The Handmaiden (2016) tells the same story several different times, from different perspectives. These stories reflect the tense relationship this generation of filmmakers has with memory and truth, after decades of tensions with North Korea and of repressive military rule.

Choi Min-sik as Oh Dae-su and Kang Hye-jung as Mi-do in *Oldboy*

Spike Lee’s Oldboy (2013) - Hollywood Remakes

In 2013, Spike Lee directed a Hollywood remake of Oldboy starring Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen. The remake received mostly negative reviews. It’s worth noting that originally, Steven Spielberg planned to remake the film with Will Smith as the lead - it’s hard to imagine how that would have played out.

Josh Brolin in Spike Lee’s *Oldboy* (2013)

Remakes fall into two categories (my categories, not official categories) - translations or reimaginings. Translations are straight adaptations, taking a story from overseas and telling it again, just translated to the new cultural context (eg Hollywood), with most of the plot, characters, and style intact. Examples of translations include The Ring (2002), or Spike Lee’s Oldboy. A common variation on the translation remake is updating an old film to a modern context.

A reimagining, on the other hand, involves using the original as inspiration, and adapting it into a wholly original new work. Examples of reimaginings include The Magnificent Seven, which adapted Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai into a Western, or Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972), which was a horror adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s dark drama The Virgin Spring (1960), or even Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed (2006), which adapted the Hong Kong crime film Infernal Affairs (2002) into a Boston mob drama.

Hollywood has been remaking films since the dawn of the sound era. But remakes really took off during the 1990s. Remakes like Scent of a Woman (1992), based on the Italian film Profumo di Donna (1974), and The Birdcage (1996), a remake of the French-Italian film La Cage aux Folles (1978), became commercial successes. Hollywood also looked to its past for source material in the 1990s, with Billy Wilder’s Sabrina (1954) getting an update in 1995, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940) becoming Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail (1998), along with films like The Haunting (1999), Father of the Bride (1991), Gus van Sant’s Psycho (1998), The Nutty Professor (1996) and Dr. Doolittle (1998) with Eddie Murphy, Flubber (1997), and The Parent Trap (1998) all drawn from previous hits.

With the rise of Asian cinemas, particularly from South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong, in the 1990s and 2000s, Hollywood discovered a new source of potential remakes. Some of the most innovative films were coming out of these movements, but since these films weren’t getting wide theatrical releases, most Americans weren’t seeing them, unless they caught them on home video. As a result, besides Oldboy, we got remakes of The Ring (2002), The Grudge (2004), Dark Water (2005), The Lake House (2006), along with a few more Godzillas and a second Magnificent Seven remake (2016).

Why the rise in remakes? One conclusion we could draw is that Hollywood is running out of original ideas. It certainly feels like it when yet another trailer pops up online, or we hear announcements like Chris Rock signing on to direct an adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (2020) or Spike Lee developing a reinterpretation of Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) for Apple and A24. But we must remember Hollywood has been adapting novels and plays into movies since its earliest days, and Hollywood is far from the only place where films are adapted from other sources - even Kurosawa remade films (The Lower Depths) and adapted Dostoevsky and Shakespeare.

Another conclusion is that Hollywood is becoming more risk averse. Movies are more expensive than ever to make and to market. Remakes allow studios to reduce their risk by using proven stories and in some cases tap into nostalgia. If something worked before, even in another market, it’s seen as less risky. I think this is a key factor in horror remakes, since so many horror films rely on a twist paying off.

There are two other, more charitable conclusions we can draw about remakes. First, Hollywood still hasn’t figured out how to market foreign language films to mainstream movie audiences. Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy, where Hollywood’s reluctance to push foreign language films into wide theatrical release prevents audiences from embracing these films? Quite possibly. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon received perhaps the widest theatrical release and marketing push for a non-English language film in US box office history, and earned over $200 million - and that was in the year 2000. It stands to reason audiences are more willing to watch films with subtitles nearly 25 years later. There’s evidence this may be happening: Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite captured Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars, and some of Netflix’s most popular dramas (e.g. Squid Game) have come from overseas.

The second conclusion we can draw: remakes - translations, updates, and reimaginings - are a natural outgrowth of cinema. Filmmakers have been using the medium and stories to communicate with audiences and other filmmakers about ideas. Remakes can be a form of tribute, a gateway to explore and possibly expand or revise someone else’s ideas. This was Spike Lee’s stated intent with remaking Oldboy - he loved the original and wanted to reinterpret the film’s story and themes. Lee’s audiences mostly had not seen the original, and so the remake gave him an opportunity to try to provide his audiences with the thrills, shocks, and surprises he experienced with Park’s original. While Lee didn’t reach the same heights as Park with the film, there’s a sense of collaboration, communion, and camaraderie between filmmakers when one reinterprets another’s work.

One of the most interesting cases of Hollywood remaking a foreign film is Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, which Haneke made in 1997 in Austria and remade in 2007 in Hollywood (although released through Warner Independent Pictures). Haneke’s 1997 film follows an upper middle class family’s holiday weekend that goes terribly awry when two polite young men invite themselves into their home and casually and coldly kidnap and torture the family. The film interrogates the issues of audiences becoming desensitized to violence, the way contemporary films glamorize violence, and how film narratives follow rules around organizing their violence (e.g. which character gets killed first), and how audiences have become desensitized to violence. The two abductors frequently breaking the fourth wall and asking the viewer who they’re rooting for, questioning why they’re watching this kind of film, and warning them about the bleak ending that’s coming.

In 2007, Haneke directed a shot-for-shot remake of Funny Games, casting Tim Roth and Naomi Watts as the bourgeois couple, and Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett as the abductors. By this point in his career, Haneke had become a critical darling and perennial film festival favorite, winning the Grand Prix at Cannes for The Piano Teacher (2001). At the same time, a new subgenre of torture-centered horror films had become reliable box office hits, with Hostel, Saw, and others . The stage was almost perfectly set for Haneke’s deconstruction of movie violence and audience complicity. What better way to satirize the whole system - torture films, movie violence, and Hollywood remakes, than to give an American studio Funny Games? The result was perhaps one the best deadpan jokes of all: Haneke’s remake of Funny Games was a box office failure, and was panned by most critics as a cruel, sadistic exercise.

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