Oldboy
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Oldboy (Hangul:올드보이) is a 2003 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook based on a Japanese manga of the same name, written by Minegishi Nobuaki and Tsuchiya Garon. The film can be described as a psychological thriller, utilizing with many elements of film noir to examine the nature of sin and morality. The bare outlines of the plot are reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo (the director himself makes the homage explicit at one point), but the movie diverges very freely from its source. It is the second installment of Park's "vengeance trilogy", following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and followed by Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.
The film won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and had won high praises from director Quentin Tarantino. The American remake is currently on hold; and previously announced director Justin Lin, best known for the teen crime drama Better Luck Tomorrow, is no longer attached. Zinda, the Bollywood film directed by Sanjay Gupta, also bears a striking resemblance to Oldboy, but is not an officially sanctioned remake. Zinda is now under investigation for violation of copyrights.
Tagline: 15 Years Of Imprisonment...5 Days Of Vengeance.
Plot
The film begins in medias res, with the silhouette of a man holding onto a rope-like object. Off camera, we hear another man say "What?" in a terrified voice. It is revealed that the silhouette is grasping the necktie of the same person, barely managing to keep him from falling off the edge of a building. The savior then states, in a calm manner, "I said, I wanted to tell you my story." to the bewildered man. "What the hell? Why are you talking like that? Who the fuck are you?" he exclaims. The camera zooms in on the face of the silhouette, partially blocked out by the sun's glare, who says "My...name is..."
The movie then cuts backward to the year 1988. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), is a Korean businessman with a wife and daughter. He is picked up by police for being drunk and disorderly, and has to be bailed out by a close friend. While his friend is in a phonebooth calling Dae-su's daughter, Dae-su is kidnapped by persons unknown.
We then find Dae-su in what appears to be a private prison resembling a shabby hotel room. He has been kept there for two months with no word of who is holding him there or why. He is gassed into unconsciousness whenever he becomes violent or suicidal, or when his holders need access to the room (e.g. to maintain it; cut his hair). His only contact with the outside world is through the television, from which he learns one day that his wife has been murdered, his daughter has been sent to foster parents and that he is himself the prime suspect. This, together with his continued captivity, causes Dae-su to slide into near-madness.
Attempting to get a grip on his sanity and determine his captor, Dae-su fills several notebooks with an autobiography-cum-prison diary, but is unable to figure out who would hate him so profoundly as to imprison him like this. He forces himself to train by shadow boxing, punching at the walls of his prison until thick calluses form on his knuckles. When one of his deliveries of fried dumplings turns out to have an extra metal chopstick, he conceals it and uses it to slowly dig a hole into one of the walls. Over the next fifteen years, he works out, follows current events on TV, and loosens enough bricks to glimpse the outside world.
Just as abruptly as he was captured, Dae-su is set free on the rooftop of a building with a new suit of clothes and his prison diaries. Adjusting to the bright afternoon light, he sees another man sitting on the edge of the building with his small dog. The first human being he has interacted with in fifteen years, Oh Dae-su is taken aback, unable to have a proper conversation with him. We learn that the man is suicidal and says to Dae-su, "Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?". He then attempts to jump off the edge, but Oh Dae-su grabs his necktie, saving him from death. Dae-su tells the man to delay his death, because he wants to tell him his story, to which he utters "What?" The scene ends at the point in which the movie began.
After relating his story, Oh Dae-su walks off and out of the building. As he is leaving the front entrance, the suicidal man lands on a car behind Dae-su, killing himself and his pet. Dae-su pauses, followed by a wide smile. "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone", he thinks to himself. Throughout the movie, Oh Dae-su uses this quote as a mantra for himself whenever he faces horrible situations. Wandering the streets of the city, Dae-su does not know what to do with his newfound freedom due to his enemies framing him as the murderer of his wife. When a gang of thugs attack him, he finds that his ten out of fifteen years of solitary training have paid off; he fends them off with only his fists. Next Dae-su stands on the street looking at fish swimming in an aquarium, when a homeless man walks up and gives him a wallet full of cash and a cellphone. He then meets Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), a girl who works in a sushi bar; she takes pity on Dae-su and takes him in.
A man called Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae) contacts Dae-su via his cellphone, and claims to be the one who imprisoned him. He offers to play a game with Dae-su: Find out why all this happened to him in the next five days. If he fails, Mi-do will die. If he succeeds, Woo-jin will kill himself.
Based on the taste of the dumplings that he ate for 15 years while imprisoned, and having seen the name "Blue Dragon" on a receipt fragment once, Dae-su goes to various Chinese restaurants with "Blue Dragon" in the name in order to determine exactly which restaurant it was. When he finally finds the right one, called "Violet Blue Dragon", he follows the delivery boy on one of his calls to the prison. Once there, he finds and ties up the prison's manager and tortures him by pulling out his teeth with a claw hammer. Dae-su learns from the manager's tape recordings that Woo-jin did indeed have him locked up, but the only reason he would give is: "Oh Dae-su talks too much."
Dae-su and Mi-do grow closer together, and one night the two of them make love while on the road. With Mi-do's help, Dae-su follows a trail that leads back to his old high school, where he discovers Woo-jin was a fellow student. One day, as it turned out, Dae-su had spied on Woo-jin and his sister, Soo-ah, and witnessed a sexual encounter. Not knowing at the time that the two were related and the scene he was witnessing was an instance of incest, Dae-su mentioned what he had seen to one of his own friends, just before transferring to a school in Seoul. Eventually, the rumor grew out of proportion until it involved Soo-ah becoming pregnant. It is not clear whether this did in fact occur, but believing it and fearing public humiliation, Soo-ah threw herself over a dam, killing herself.
Dae-su confronts Woo-jin with all of this information, and suggests further that Woo-jin killed his own sister, afraid of fathering her child. Woo-jin does indeed possess a photo of Soo-ah on the dam, dated the day of her death. But Woo-jin sides-steps these allegations with an even more devastating revelation. He gives Dae-su a photo album, the first picture of which is a family portrait of himself, his wife, and his daughter. The remaining photos in the album are of his daughter growing older, until in horror Dae-su discovers that his daughter is none other than Mi-do. By carefully manipulating both of their lives - Dae-su's since his incarceration and Mi-do's since her father vanished - and hypnotizing each of them independently, Woo-jin was able to cause Dae-su and Mi-do to commit incest as well.
Dae-su is horrified, and begs Woo-jin not to tell Mi-do, even going so far as to cut off his own tongue so that he will never talk too much again. With his thirst for vengeance that was his sole reason for living finally spent, Woo-jin spares Mi-do from knowing and readies to kill himself and Dae-Su with the same bullet. He changes his mind, however, and exits the penthouse in an elevator, leaving Dae-Su alone to be tormented by a tape recording of his incestous love-making with his own daughter. As Woo-jin leaves, we are taken back into his memory of his sister's death. He is holding Soo-ah over the dam, and she says that she has always known that Woo-jin was afraid, that she regrets nothing and asks him to let go of her. She seems at peace, and Woo-jin is tearful and looks afraid. Eventually he releases his grip. The camera is focused on his open hand, which slowly closes as if around a gun, and cocks an imaginary trigger. Next, he fires the real gun into his head in the elevator - he has never forgiven himself for letting his sister die.
In an epilogue set in a wintery landscape, Dae-su goes to a hypnotist (the same one whom Woo-jin hired to hypnotize both Dae-su and Mi-do) and asks for her help to forget the secret. He writes her a letter, since he can no longer talk. The hypnotist said that she originally did not want to help him, but she was touched by his last sentence: "Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?". It is the same sentence Oh Dae-su heard from the suicidal man who appeared at the beginning of the movie.
The hypnotist tells Oh Dae-su to imagine himself back at Woo-jin's penthouse. She uses hypnosis to split Dae-su into two personalities: the "Monster", who remembers the secret, and the "ignorant" Dae-su, who doesn't.
When the hypnotist asks Dae-su to split into the two people, a reflection of himself appears in the window. The hypnotist tells him that the monster will walk away and for every step he takes, he will age a year and die when he reaches 70. The reflection is the "Monster" - he holds a grim expression and remains unmoved, unwilling to leave his place in Dae-su's mind. The "ignorant" Dae-su, smiling blissfully, takes on the suggestion of the hypnotist instead, turning around and beginning his walk away from Dae-su's mind.
Dae-su wakes up. The hypnotist had already gone, and he is left lying on the cold ground with a delirious feeling. He stumbles about, looking for Mido to confirm whether or not the hypnotism was successful. Finally, with some hesitation, he met up with Mido and they embrace. When the soft spoken Mido tells Dae-su that she loves him, that message triggered something in Dae-su's mind.
Dae-su begins to smile, but it quickly turns into a grimace, as past memories flashes pass in his mind and he realizes the horrible truth. The hypnotism was ineffective - Dae-su is still the monster.
Open Interpretation of the Ending
The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and the audience is left with several questions. How much time has passed? Did Dae-Su really meet the hypnotist? Can he finally rid himself of the Monster, who possesses the terrible knowledge? Does Mido know the truth?
While the above interpretation is generally the most common, in an interview director Park Chan-Wook says that the ambiguous ending was intended to generate discussion; it is completely up to what each individual viewer interprets it as.
Trivia
- The octopus being eaten alive was no special effect but a real animal; four were killed during the making of the movie. Actor Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist, said a prayer for each one. It should also be noted that the eating of live octopi as a delicacy is not unheard of in Korea.
- The corridor fight scene took seventeen takes in three days to perfect, and contrary to popular belief, it was actually just one continuous take - there was no editing of any sort. Though the scene has often been compared visually to side scrolling "beat 'em up" video games, director Park Chan-wook has stated the similarity was unintentional.
- Choi Min-sik lost and gained weight for his role depending on the filming schedule, trained for six weeks and did most of his stuntwork.
- Computer-generated imagery include the ant coming out of Oh Dae-su's arm (according to the making-of on the DVD the whole arm was computer-generated imagery), the ants crawling over Oh Dae-su afterwards and the knife in his back in the corridor fight scene.
- When Oh Dae-su wakes up and sees Mi-do read his diary he grabs it and jumps back into bed, bumping his head; the making-of shows the bumping was not intentional but the scene made it into the final version.
- The final scene's snowy landscape was filmed in New Zealand.
- As of July 2006, Oldboy is #119 on IMDb's top 250 movies list.
- Actor Choi Min-sik improvised most of his lines during the confrontation with Woo-jin.
- According to the released soundtrack, nearly all the music cues composed by Yeong-Wook Jo are titled after movies, many of them film noirs.
Controversy over Zinda
Oldboy producers ShowEast are investigating allegations that the Indian film Zinda is very similar to Park Chan-Wook's hit. They talked with the press, saying that the only remake rights contract they ever signed was with Universal in the US, and with no one else, including India. The company announced that after looking at the finished product they will make their decision, which might have legal ramifications.Cast
- Oh Dae-su – Choi Min-sik
- Lee Woo-jin – Yu Ji-tae
- Mi-do – Kang Hye-jeong
Recurring Cast in Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy
Mr.V – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance / Oldboy - Oldboy / Lady - Sympathy for Lady Vengeance / JSA – Joint Security AreaThree - Segment of Park Chan-Wook in Three... Extremes / IYWM - Segment of Park Chan-Wook in If you were me(2003) / Judgement - Short film of Park Chan-Wook (1999)
| Actor | Photo | Mr.V | Oldboy | Lady | JSA | Three | Other Film |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song Gang-ho |  | father of kidnapped girl | Hired kidnapper attacking the heroine | North Korean Sgt | |||
| Shin Ha-kyun |  | the deaf Protagonist | Hired kidnapper attacking the heroine | North Korean Private | |||
| Choi Min-sik |  | Oh Dae-Su (Protagonist) | Antagonist (english teacher) | ||||
| Kang Hye-jeong |  | Mido(heroine) | TV News Anchor | wife of director | |||
| Yu Ji-tae |  | Lee Woo-Jin (antagonist) | Ghost of murdered child | ||||
| Lee Byung Hun |  | first choice for the role of Lee Woo-Jin which he turned down | protagnoist (south-korean soldier) | movie director | |||
| Lee Young Ae |  | Heroine | Heroine (investigating officer) | ||||
| Lee Dae-yeon |  | Police Detective (captain) | the beggar who gives the cell phone to Dae-Su | Prison Warden | South Korean Sergent (Sgt Hwang) | Male Actor in a high-school girl uniform | |
| Oh Kwang-rok |  | leader of anarchist gang | Suicidal man | vengeful father with an ax | |||
| Gi Ju-bong | Laid-off Engineer | South Korean general | Father of the victim in 'Judgement' | ||||
| Oh Dal-su |  | Jail owner | Bakery owner | Police officer in 'IYWM' | |||
| Yun Jin-seo |  | Sister of Lee Woo-Jin | Prisoner | ||||
| Ji Dae-han | Police Detective | Joo-Hwan (Dae Su's friend and the owner of a cybercafe) | |||||
| Lee Seung-Sin |  | Hypnotist | Wife of Antagonist | ||||
| Park Myeung-shin | Coiffeuse | Victim's family member | |||||
| Kim Byeong-ok |  | Mr. Han (Bodyguard of Woo-Jin) | Preacher |
- Park Chan-Wook and his close friend director Kim Ji-Woon love to share their actors. For example, in A Bittersweet Life of Kim Ji-Woon, you can find Lee Byung Hun, Oh Kwang-rok and Oh Dal-su while the stepmom of A Tale of Two Sisters plays the role of the vampire in Park's 'Three' and the elder sister of A Tale of Two Sisters will be the heroine of the next Park Chan-Wook I'm a Cyborg, but that's OK.
Awards
- 57th Cannes Film Festival
- * Grand Prix of the Jury – Park Chan-wook
- * Nominated de Palme D'or – Park Chan-wook
- Grand Bell Awards – South Korea 2004
- * Best Director – Park Chan-wook
- * Best Actor – Choi Min-sik
- * Best Edition – Kim Sang-beom
- * Best Illumination – Park Hyun-won
- * Best Music – Cho Young-wuk
- 37th Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya - Sitges 2004
- * Maria Award (Best Film)
- * José Luis Guarner Award (Critics' Best Film)
- Bergen International Film Festival 2004
- * Audience Award
- British Independent Film Awards 2004
- * Best Film
- European Film Awards 2004
- * Nominated for Screen International Award
See also
External links
- [Oldboy at Rottentomatoes.com]
- [Tartan Video (American distributor for Oldboy)]
- [Review of the movie @ koreanfilm.org]
- [Review of Oldboy] at Lunapark6.com
- [A Comparison Between the Multiple DVD Editions of "Oldboy"]
- [Japanese website of the film]
- [Russian website of the film]
- [Controversy over Zinda]
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