An oafish drunk is abducted then imprisoned in a sealed facsimile of a slum living space. His indifferent captors offer no explanation or sentence to their raging prisoner. For fifteen long years, Oh Dae-su's only light source is a bulb; his food the same serving of a fried take away each and every day. This banged-up salaryman's sleep cycle is likewise maintained by Valium gas. Suicide attempts are swiftly thwarted, all Oh Dae-su can do is box the walls and think on which dreadful act landed him here. Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi's manga, from which this film is adapted, posits this state of confinement as a necessary step to realising a new, hyper-masculine identity. On the page, Oh Dae-su becomes a stoic, swaggering mensch in the Golgo 13 mould. A butch bar-brawler who beds then broods. Park Chan-wook's film retains this idea of muscle memory, but the director allows his lead to unravel. The long, anonymous incarceration dismantles Oh Dae-su, stripping him back to something venal. All the aggravated repetition has reconstructed him as a prowling beast, possessed of considerable violence. A notable departure from a source that was much more interested in 9-to-5 wish-fulfilment. This new dominant and animalistic persona proves useful to Oh Dae-su when he's thugging his way closer to the parties who stole his life but, when this issue is resolved, can it readapt to less base circumstances? Choi Min-sik's Oh Dae-su is a queasy centre in Oldboy. His revenge is characterised not by the triumphant, but instead an instinctive-level necessity. A reason for his punishment is the only thing that can make sense of the existential demolition job that has been perpetrated on this man. It's the only real drive this former salaryman has left. Complicating this situation further is his constant, prickling fear that he actually deserves what has happened to him.
No comments:
Post a Comment