Oldboy

“Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone.” Yeah, It’s definitely finally time to give some of my thoughts about this blood-splattered, ultra violent, neo noir revenge epic modern classic after yet another watch. Eighteen years ago, Park Chan-Wook gave us a masterpiece that, to this day, remains a classic of the macabre that brought new life to the genre and proves himself to be a visionary of vengeance. The film has rightfully consolidated its cult status, more or less undamaged by the atrocious American remake released in 2013, starring Josh Brolin. Oldboy (2003) tells the brutal, rollercoaster of a story following a man named Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), who, seemingly out of the blue, is kidnapped off of the street incarcerated in a hidden cell for 15 years. After being framed for his wife’s murder and having his life utterly destroyed, Oh, naturally, seeks the reason for his imprisonment and vows revenge and seek the truth. After he unexpectedly gets released, the once boorish, drunken man discovers that he has a longtime enemy – who has taken a terrible revenge against him and will continue to do so for something Dae-su can’t remember and for which he too will take vengeance in his turn. When he finally gets out, he is not the catatonically reduced ghost of a man we might expect: he is completely born anew into something else entirely thats fired up and has evolved into a revenge machine, capable of anything (including eating a live octopus just because he wants to). Along the way in the story, he meets and becomes acquainted with a young woman, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), who helps him on his mission of vengeance. There is many undercurrents throughout the film critiquing capitalism as there is a multitude of moments where violence as capitalism intersect just as it did in Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. Oh Dae-su first appears at a police station, he has been detained because of drunken behavior, The film presents Dae-su as boorish, flaccid, undisciplined, and unhappy; we see that he is a bad friend, and a bad father. Oh Dae-su jokes about his name and indicates his middle class status in the name itself. Oh Dae-su’s name in Korean is 오대수, and he plays with words using the syllables of his name, saying it means “오늘만 대충 수습하면서살자.” Which roughly translates to, “Let’s just get through today.” In stark contrast, the Dae-su released from his prison is stoic, disciplined, hard, strong, and capable of great violence. Changed by revenge, and the violence that accompanies it, Dae-su gives himself a new moniker of “Monster,” noting that he is not the same Oh Dae-su. Violence makes him wealthy, in a way. Now he wears designer clothes and carries a thick wallet. Violence also gives him mobility. Before his release, Dae-su appears only in confined spaces: the police station, the telephone booth, and the prison cell. The ‘Monster’ navigates not only Seoul, but also the entire country with ease. Violence gives him means to resist against his upper class oppressor who is watching everything from an expensive penthouse view. But this newfound persona and the promises that it holds soon turn into disappointments, as Oldboy too ultimately reveals that resistance is futile. Dae-su eventually ends up shedding his new persona of the Monster and reverting back to Dae-su. I find that another interesting point to add is that when Oh is imprisoned he does not just simply plan his revenge, but again, he tries to find out the reason for his imprisonment, which results in him deciding to write down what wrong he has done to others, and admitting that his life contained too many evil deeds due to how long his list becomes and makes it harder for him to narrow done who his tormentor is. Lee’s own revenge is almost an unintentional confession of his own guilt, since it requires Oh to know what he has done wrong, and making Oh face the consequences of the very same transgression that he has committed is literally sharing out his own guilt, as if to “normalize” his own offense and make him feel not alone in his guilt that he blames Dae-Su for. I also noticed that the film interestingly begins and almost ends with the identical scene of somebody stopping another person from committing suicide, where responsibility literally spreads from one person to the other. But Oh cannot see that he is implicated in another’s suicide (in fact, the reason that Oh stops the man from the beginning of the movie from killing himself is only to pass his story onto him, without reciprocating the favor after being locked away from others for over a decade and showing signs of his narcissistic personality). In the film, responsibility keeps getting passed around until someone else gets stuck with it. The characters are simply confused, or cannot bear to actually say who is responsible for what. Oh does not commit an ‘unforgivable sin’ against Lee’s sister but against his own daughter, and it is Lee who causes his sister’s death, not Oh– as Oh has to take on the entire weight of what has transpired because of Lee’s initial offense. The scene gets repeated when Lee recounts the scene of his sister’s suicide (where Lee loses his usual unshakable demeanor), and how it is supposed to be an altruistic suicide, protecting their secret from being known, as she tells him that she knows he has been always afraid and wants to assure him that she regrets nothing. But, again, it is impossible for a person who witnesses someone else’s death not to be implicated, and when Lee lets his sister fall to her death, even though it follows her wishes, it is as if he has killed her, which increases his sense of guilt about her death and the offense that caused it and makes him feel that he must punish somebody other than himself and directs his revenge towards Dae-su. The film also something particularly interesting about morality, essentially that it is not the external punishment that is responsible for the awareness of a wrongdoing, but the internal feeling of guilt that occurs within a wrongdoer, especially Oh Dae-su when the truth is revealed to him in the intense ending. A moral of Oldboy that could be taken away could be that people must bear their share of guilt and whatever punishment that results from it. Park Chan-wook’s direction is unbelievable which solidifies him as one of my favorite directors of all time. He understands the expectation of the audience and creates a furious and reactive pace that you do not have time to piece the mystery together, making the reveal all the more gut wrenching. He manipulates us, as Oh is manipulated, both to not see the twist coming and to be complicit in the moral failure of Oh Dae-Su. This is what makes the movie so disturbing. It is a simple thing to dismiss and deny our capacity for evil and ultra violence, to think of ourselves as ‘good’ people when we are not faced with such an extreme moral conflict. Chan-wook actually makes the audience root for the love between Oh Dae-Su and Mi-Do, (before the reveal happens) he creates scenes where the two become lovers and invites the unwitting viewer to be complicit in this act. When the reveal is finally made we are not just shocked, we are disgusted with what we have borne witness to. The film can be understood as a parable about knowledge (and more specifically, self-knowledge) as the full force of the film is in its forcing the viewer to deal with the nature of truth, subjectivity and how we choose to establish moral boundaries (either as transcendent or situational). The dangers of seeking knowledge out to its entirety is presented when Oh Dae-Su’s final choice is presented and what makes the movie an unflinching look at human nature. We are not given the ambiguity of “what-ifs” that could have been left us (in a way that lets us off the hook), but we see his final choice and have to ask ourselves what we would have done. Oh Dae-Su tracks down the hypnotist who had programmed Mi-Do and himself to fall in love, and has her wipe his mind of the truth, so that they can continue on in ignorance, not having to contend with the horrible reality of things. Chan-wook is challenging us to see the denial of transcendent ideals for what it is. We are constantly hypnotizing ourselves to realities in order to justify, validate, or, at its worst, disintegrate morality altogether What Chan-wook is calling the audience to wrestle with, however, is the centrality of humanity that typifies progressive theory and ask: What is morality? I have been following Park Chan-Wook’s work for quite some time, he constantly insists his films are contain an ethical point he wanted to make otherwise they wouldn’t have been made in the first place, which I respect as an aspiring filmmaker of the macabre. Oldboy just as his other works unravels in a downward spiral littered with existentialism and nihilistic philosophical arguments about the nature of humanity and what we are capable of. To sidetrack, another instance of masterful storytelling was how film suggests that that the two characters have been playing on a level field, however the narrative reveals that Dae-su was able to face Woo-jin because Woo-jin allowed him to and was steps ahead of his every action. Dae-su seemingly emerges victorious. He learns the reason for his imprisonment. He reunites with his daughter. His enemies die while he lives. At the end of the film however, Dae-su wears a smile in a beaten down, defeated state that resembles the smile in a grotesque painting on the wall of the prison along with the quotation expressing one of Oldboy’s central themes: “Laugh and the world will laugh with you. Cry and you will cry alone.” In contrast, Woo-jin acquires everything that he wanted. Not only does he already have financial success, he also succeeds in his master plan of revenge, fully realized and executed flawlessly and played out over two decades. By the end of the film, Woo-jin has successfully made Dae-su commit to an incestuous relationship that he cannot end without ruining his daughter’s life. Woo-jin has made Dae-su cut out the tongue he blames for being the cause of his sisters death due to the rumors that spread because of Oh, and as if that weren’t enough, his victory extends beyond the grave, as Dae-su cannot find solace even after Woo-jin is dead, with the botched hypnosis from the hypnotist that originally brainwashed him and his daughter from forgetting they know each other. Woo-jin’s final words before he shoots himself in the head, “What do I have to live for now?” acknowledges the fulfillment of all his desires coming to fruition. Oldboy is truly a brilliant film that uses foreshadowing, metaphors and cinematography to tell its tale. It’s undeniably influential, the one shot fight scene being copied left and right. Foreshadowing. It plays a big part in Oldboy. From fairly obvious moments such as the introduction in which Oh Dae-su is under arrest, to the less noticeable moments, such as where our protagonist makes note of the fact he has been hypnotised, but before we know the effects of such hypnosis. As his soon to be lover touches his hand, he falls asleep. The use of Dae-su questioning our antagonist’s motives at first doesn’t seem to be related to anything around him at that moment. Yet seconds later, he passes out at the touch of the woman he admires. It is only at the end of the film we learn that both he and his lover (and simultaneously daughter) was, too, hypnotized. Further foreshadowing can be found in the moments before this. Oh Dae-su and Mi-do feel they recognise one another; this later becomes apparent as to why. Furthermore, audio plays a big part in the way things are hinted to. The theme on his ringtone plays whenever Woo-Jin calls him, is made orchestral in the love scene between Dae -su and Mido. This theme is present throughout the film, and it becomes apparent that it is used to hypnotise him. It’s played in the room, when the gas comes in. This all plays a part in the looming ending. It’s nuances like this that make me love this film. There are more instances of foreshadowing, and other cinematic techniques throughout the film. However one more thing I wish to touch upon is the use of the ants as hallucinations. Mi-do says that they are common among the lonely. The hallucination comes after Dae-su learns of his wife’s death, which indicates he is alone; not just because of his predicament, but because now the woman that was the only way he could connect to his daughter is now dead. It’s clear he does not love his wife through the amount of affairs he is implied to take part in, however his wife would be the only way for him to find the daughter when he does get out. This, in turn, means he is truly alone. His daughter, whom he clearly loves in his own way through the purchase of a present early on, is his only hope. Now she is parentless and orphaned. So not only do the ants show he is alone literally, but everyone he cares for is gone even if he does get out. He remarks that he’s the man who killed his wife, which results in making everyone hate him. This is true loneliness. The ending reveal made me truly feel sick which doesn’t happen often and the fact that this film does not overtly condemn its character’s immoral actions does not mean that it approves of the actions. It is common for a film of this nature to refrain from taking a particular moral position, even when it is dealing with an immoral or evil character, and we often concur with the attitude. But this position is rather peculiar on the face of it; when an immoral conduct is being shown, how can we be nonjudgmental about it? If an action that is immoral is performed, such as the actions in the story, then how can there be any possible response other than condemnation? No matter how many times I watch and analyze this movie, I keep finding things I love about it and separate it from other films of this genre. "Now I have become a monster. When my vengeance is over… Can I return to Oh Dae-su?" The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)