Oldboy

The moment when Lee Woo-jin asked Oh Dae-su why he thought he had him locked away for fifteen years is when all the dots suddenly connected for me. I've never felt so disturbed after watching a film before — even recounting the events in my head for this review is making my stomach turn. Whether or not the twist was obvious is up to the viewer, but in retrospect, it makes the relationship between Oh Dae-su and Mi-do so much darker. At the time, I questioned why the sex scenes felt so invasive — I watched with a friend, and I even said out loud "it feels like I wasn't even supposed to be seeing that" — and yet after watching, it makes so much sense in that the viewer becomes like Oh Dae-su watching Lee Woo-jin and his sister through the broken classroom window. Mi-do's dialogue during the scene was somehow intimate and graphic at the same time, but it took a much, much more sinister turn later on in the film. Woo-jin is undoubtedly the most evil antagonist I've ever seen in a film thus far, and yet his own personal revenge story is gripping in a horrifying sort of way as we watch a deeply sick man perfectly plot his way to success. All I knew about Oldboy was that it had an iconic hallway fight scene (absolute cinema BTW), and so I was not expecting the emotional turmoil that it put me through at all. The writers did an incredible job tricking the viewer right up until the climax — one detail I really liked was the reverse of Mi-do's expectations. She had prayed that Woo-jin would be on his knees begging for mercy, and yet the very opposite played out, showing that in the end, Woo-jin was in control, maybe even serving as a divine rejection of Woo-jin due to his "sins". I think Dae-su's breakdown was my favourite part — Choi Min-Sik's portrayal of a man who has been totally and utterly destroyed was so heart-wrenching. <iOldboy is unapologetically cruel to its characters, and the last line of dialogue is probably the best evidence of this. Perhaps the hypnotism worked only for Mi-do, or only for Dae-su, or for both, or for neither. No matter which angle you take, Mi-do calling Dae-su by his name instead of "dad" is the cruellest and yet somehow the best way to end this film.