Mmmmovies

I finished watching Old Boy last night, and now for you reading pleasure, I offer my three and a half cents.

Warning: If you have not seen this movie, click away from my blog immediately--and go rent it (and, preferrably, watch it, also).

Now that that's out of the way, Old Boy is a Korean movie which explores vengeance, hero-complexes, love and compulsion. The movie also explores the layers and interconnections between dream and reality, subconscious and conscious in one of the more provocative ways I've ever seen. Before gushing a bit more, I offer a brief synopsis: Oh Dae Su is kidnapped one night and imprisoned in a hotel-like room for fifteen years, during which time he is drugged, gassed, and hypnotized. In an interesting twist, he is given a television, and the director exploits the strange existential element of watching a movie in which the main character watches and lives through his television for fifteen years (an irony not wasted on this gal--who watched the movie alone this last Friday night).
Oh Dae Su has no idea who has captured him, nor why someone wanted to exact this level of revenge upon him. About six years into his imprisonment, he is given an extra chopstick with his meal, and uses the chopstick to start digging through the wall to his escape; just as he has begun to "break on through to the other side," a hypnotist comes in and we fall into his subconsious mind, and the imagery suggested there by the hypnotist.

Now, before progressing further, this in itself was the first tip to me that this film was really going to be more than your usual revenge-flick (for prime examples, see the entire Charles Bronson catalogue). There's never a concrete point at which we know he's awakened, conscious that is, and actually living again--or whether we're simply going through the hypnosis with him.
Again, the director is amazing at exploiting the existential element of existence--by not only seeing him under hynposis on the couch, but rather falling into his dream-visions, we simultaneously are the audience and the subject--and our awareness of our role as audience changes our reasoning about Oh Dae Su's experiences.

Either way, now Oh Dae Su is out and about, free from the hotel-prison, and out to find out Who and Why--and to exact his revenge, of course. A young waitress immediately becomes his lifeline and only trusted ally in his quest. So, to wrap up the synopsis, he discovers that the Tormenter is really an old classmate, whom Oh Dae Su spied making out with his sister (Oh Dae Su was unaware that they were related), and about whom Oh Dae Su unwittingly started rumors that the sister was a slut, which grew into rumors that the sister was pregnant, to boot. Again, the director is excellent at exploiting the effects of an audience on the existence of a subject; the rumors became real to the Sister, so that she began to exhibit signs of pregnancy--we never learn if she actually was pregnant or not, and that's not the point. The director again drives home the point that fantasy/delusion/dreams are an integral part of a person's existence--and to do this so well in a revenge pic...well, I'm going to write a letter and propose to this man.

Back to the plot: So, in an interesting Hitchcockian twist, we learn that the young waitress is actually Oh Dae Su's daughter, who was also hynpotized to fall in love with Oh Dae Su--the Tormenter (brother) has succeeded in forcing Oh Dae Su to commit incest. Further, Oh Dae Su now begs the Tormenter not to reveal this secret to Oh Dae Su's daughter. Oh Dae Su falls to the floor, offers to become the Tormenter's bitch, pleas with him, demands of him, curses him, and finally cuts off his own tongue. The Tormenter decides not to tell the daughter, and leaves Oh Dae Su in his apartment with a tape of him making incestuous love to his daughter.

The Tormenter, his vengenace achieved, kills himself in the elevator.

The camera flashes into the future, a snowy scene in which we see that Oh Dae Su has aged considerably, and looks quite miserable. He has written a letter to the hynpotist used by Tormenter so that the hynpotist may relieve him of his awful secret. We fall again into Oh Dae Su's hynoptized mind; however, this time, we can't tell if the hynoptists' suggestions are working. The ambiguity of the movie (is it all a dream? is it reality? is some this and other that...) culminates with the ambiguity over whether or not Oh Dae Su has been able to forget his secret, whether his daughter knows the truth, whether the hypnotist was really there, etc.

So. This movie is now one of my top five EVER films. So many levels!!! The existential element was discussed as I wrote the plot summary; now I turn to other things (kind of):

One of the things I love most about this film is its resistance to hero-ize Oh Dae Su. As he's seeking vengeance, he notes that he is becoming a monster; vengeance is changing his very substance as a Man. Further, while you may have been cheering for him while he tries to take down Tormenter, after we learn the Tormenter's story, we realize that either every one's a hero, or there are no heroes here. That is, the Tormenter was doing the same thing in tormenting Oh Dae Su as Oh Dae Su wished to do for his imprisonment. Granted one's crime (the tormenter's treatment of Oh Dae Su) was more premediateted than Oh Dae Su's crime (he didn't mean for his friend to spread around the rumor, and warned him not tell anyone); however, the Tormenter repeats this phrase throughout the film: "Be it a grain or sand or a rock in water the both sink the same."

As an audience, however, we're not exposed to the Tormenter's pain, and therefore, we identify--and begin to root for--Oh Dae Su. In the final twist, we're left without heroes nor villains. We're left in a world of ambiguity--the most wonderful sort.