By Mark Morrison
Tellingly, Park Chan-Wook’s Old Boy was one of a select fourteen films in the entire 400-something film catalogue of The 2004 Melbourne International Film Festival catalogue which contained “scenes which may offend some viewers.”
And in one of them, lead actor Choi Min-Sik eats a live octopus. It could be explained that it’s actually vital to the plot, as it shows the depth of his character Dae-su’s all-consuming need for revenge on the people who have incarcerated him for fifteen years, not to mention his craving for something fresh after fifteen years of prison-delivered fried dumplings. The scene also demonstrates the incredible rapport between actor and director, because there’s no other way that Choi would have agreed to shuck down calamari au naturel, live and squirming.
“Choi Min-Sik had been cast from the very initial stage of dramatisation,” the director told FilmInk in 2003. “I wrote the script with him in mind, and he constantly provided his feedback. In particular, I gave him more freedom to experiment.”
Whichever way you look at it, the cephalopod gets it. And if that offends you, then that’s a shame, because you’ll be missing one of the most invigorating and inventive films of the new millennium, and one that just happened to win the Cannes Grand Prix. “I had been introduced to the Cannes festival for the first time with this film,” the director said of his surprise at the win. “Old Boy was known as a pretty commercial film, and I presumed it wouldn’t attract much attention at all, let alone win a prize!”
Old Boy’s 2004 Cannes win confirmed Park’s arrival on the international scene after his total success in Korea. Before embarking on a career in cinematic octocide, he was a lapsed philosopher, originally enrolling at Sogang University with the intention of learning about aesthetics and perhaps becoming an art critic. Instead, he became disillusioned with the syllabus and started to dabble in photography. Around this time, he saw Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and knew that he had to become a film director.
After a couple of minor efforts, his third film – the taut thriller Joint Security Area, which distilled the tensions between North and South Korea with succinct precision – changed everything. Beautifully shot, structurally brilliant and as moving as hell, JSA set a new high watermark for the Korean box office at that time. Park followed that up with the relentlessly downbeat Sympathy For Mister Vengeance, which sets two ordinary men against each other by chance circumstance and tragic mishap until each is driven to completely annihilate the other. It’s the last word on revenge, and is more soul-searingly violent than both Kill Bills plus interest.
The film sadly tanked at the box office, but this didn’t spell the end of Park Chan-Wook. On the left hand, he had a massive, commercial hit. On the right hand, a critically-acclaimed bomb, dearer to the director’s heart. But Park put his hands together and the result was Old Boy, which is slick like JSA but as rabid as Sympathy For Mister Vengeance – it was hugely popular with the Korean punters and was been globally acclaimed.
Old Boy is the story of Dae-su, who is kidnapped seemingly at random after a drunken night and imprisoned by unseen captors for fifteen years. Suddenly released on the eve of staging his own breakout, he receives a wallet full of cash, a mobile phone, and an eventual bargain that if he can figure out the reason he was locked up, his tormentor will kill himself.
Old Boy showed off Park’s skill for visual intensity and precision filmmaking, and is the perfect distillation of this incredible director’s talents. “I tend to employ expert storyboard artists and try to draw pictures in detail as much as possible,” he told FilmInk of his planning process. “Then I get an opportunity to polish the storyline once more as a scriptwriter. It’s like trimming down unnecessary elements for the last time, and completing a plan to build a structurally strong building.”
The Handmaiden is screening now in select cinemas, and will open wider on November 3. Click here for our review, which features all screening locations.
