The first time I heard about Chan-Wook Park was when I watched his movie Joint Security Area in which North Korean and South Korean border guards touchingly get to know each other, although the hostility of the two states overhangs the freshly-formed friendship.
The powerlessness of the individual already played a big role in JSA , but Park's latest movie Old Boy crowns this tragic topic. The main character Oh Dae-Su is pulled into a barbarously brutal vicious circle that seems to have only one purpose: depriving the human being of all humanity until the viewers can hardly stomach it.
The protagonist cutting his tongue right out of his bloody mouth or the same person quarrying out 15 teeth one by one using nothing but a hammer. Park barely allows the viewers breaks from such uncut close-ups.
The more or less jaunty beginning might mislead an unprepared viewer.
Oh Dae-Su's arrest due to drunkenness suddenly turns into a 15-year long nightmare when he is kidnapped on the street after his discharge.
Without any reason being stated he is detained in a furnished hotel room. Everyday the same food, everyday the same TV program everyday the same question in his head. Who did this to me?
When he suddenly gains freedom this question is the only motor driving him.
Blinded by his literally bone-squelching rage he believes that his investigations will lead him to the answer to his problem. The "who" is clear, but what about the "why”?
In an impressive manner Park displays the total disempowerment of the main character. Every step he takes turns out to be planned by his superior tormentor and when Oh Dae-Su finally comes face to face with him and learns the whole truth the borderline between victim and avenger - between good and evil - becomes blurry until the viewer can hardly call one of the characters either totally guilty or totally innocent.
But the eructative is not the cruelty and inhumanity but rather how unpredictably people fall prey to it. Inanities ruin lives in this movie and make lovers turn into inhuman monsters.
Chan-Wook Park could be criticised for his movie style – scenes of deformation, incest and sadism - but highly visible also are moments where the figures' mourning and pain solely dominate the picture. Thus one of the most disgusting scenes in the movie is one of the most impressive ones.
Barely released from his prison Oh Dae-Su orders a living cattle. He gorges the slimy animal as if he didn't eat for years. For a while a groping arm still juts out of his mouth. An emotionally murdered man desperately tries to absorb a whiff of life. It is one creature carried to an extreme by another. Maybe the real cruelty in this movie is the depiction of the banality of humans inflicting damage on each other.
Michael Kröber, 3. Semester