Old­boy and the aes­thet­ics of nation­al trauma

“In Kore­an cin­e­ma, there is Before Old­boy and After Old­boy,” US dis­trib­u­tor Neon pro­claimed when pro­mot­ing the 20^th anniver­sary the­atri­cal re-release of Park Chan-wook’s sem­i­nal film in the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er full of hyper­bole, Neon — also respon­si­ble for bring­ing Bong Joon-Ho’s Par­a­site to US audi­ences — is not wrong. The glob­al con­cep­tion of South Kore­an cin­e­ma has rad­i­cal­ly trans­formed in the two decades fol­low­ing the release of Park’s thriller Old­boy in 2003, large­ly as a result of Park’s influence.

Vio­lent cri­tiques of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, once unimag­in­able under the nation’s strict cen­sor­ship laws, have become hall­marks of South Korea’s filmic out­put. As des­per­a­tion and despon­den­cy appear as increas­ing­ly sym­pa­thet­ic respons­es to eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ty, inter­na­tion­al audi­ences have embraced pro­gram­ming that dra­ma­tizes these feel­ings. In 2020, Par­a­site estab­lished itself as the first for­eign lan­guage film to win an Oscars Best Pic­ture award, and in 2021, the Net­flix series Squid Game broke out as the stream­ing platform’s most-watched show of all time. And now, in 2023, NEON has restored and remas­tered the pre­vi­ous­ly un-stream­able film that pio­neered the genre.

Old­boy is a loose adap­ta­tion of Garon Tsuchiya and Nobua­ki Minegishi’s man­ga of the same name, and the sec­ond instal­ment in Park’s ​‘Vengeance Tril­o­gy’, a series that explores the epony­mous theme through vio­lent plots car­ried out by deeply flawed pro­tag­o­nists. Across all three, the anti-heroes often seek revenge for a dis­rup­tion of the fam­i­ly line. In this round­about man­ner, these heav­i­ly styl­ized thrillers chart a par­ents’ desire to care for and pro­tect their chil­dren, at any cost. To link this for­ma­tion to Con­fu­cian ide­ol­o­gy may not be the stretch it ini­tial­ly appears. In fact, despite the near-uni­ver­sal­i­ty of work­ing class des­per­a­tion in mono­lith­ic pow­er strug­gles, the series is a dis­tinct­ly Kore­an cri­sis of mas­culin­i­ty. Park’s focus on dis­em­pow­ered char­ac­ters sur­viv­ing in the alley­ways and tem­po­rary hous­ing of a bur­geon­ing megac­i­ty may be a response to the impos­si­bil­i­ties of liv­ing under the chae­bol sys­tem — which includes fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness con­glom­er­ates such as Sam­sung, Hyundai, and LG — and decades of deny­ing film­mak­ers the right to rep­re­sent such frustration.

The most famous of Park’s Vengeance films, Old­boy fol­lows Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-Sik), an oth­er­wise unspec­tac­u­lar salary­man, as he seeks to under­stand and avenge his 15 years of seem­ing­ly unpro­voked pri­vate cap­tiv­i­ty. In the open­ing sequence, Dae-Su is arrest­ed for pub­lic drunk­en­ness and miss­es his daughter’s fourth birth­day. Imme­di­ate­ly, an inter­est in patri­ar­chal rela­tions and failed mas­culin­i­ty is laid bare. Dae-Su is kid­napped and impris­oned in a sealed hotel room. In a mon­tage detail­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tion, self-harm, shad­ow­box­ing, and failed escape plots, Dae-Su spends his long cap­tiv­i­ty on the verge of psy­chot­ic break. Choi Min-Sik is both com­pelling and ter­ri­fy­ing with his man­ic eyes, his bared teeth, and his hand-poked tat­too tal­ly­ing the years lost to imprisonment.

His 15 years of impris­on­ment coin­cide with the accel­er­at­ed mod­ern­iza­tion of South Korea, begin­ning with the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which are often regard­ed as the county’s entry­point into a sys­tem of glob­al exchange. In a split-screen mon­tage of the world beyond Dae-Su’s cap­tiv­i­ty, Park charts South Korea’s posi­tion in the shift­ing glob­al land­scape. News footage details the arrest of for­mer pres­i­dent Chun Doo-hwan in 1995, the Hong Kong Han­dover Cer­e­mo­ny in 1997, the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the IMF cri­sis in late 1997, the swear­ing in of pres­i­dent Kim Dae-jung in 1997, a cel­e­bra­tion of the turn of the mil­len­ni­um in 2000, footage from ⁹⁄₁₁ in 2001, Korea’s entry into the World Cup quar­ter finals in 2002, and the elec­tion of pres­i­dent Roh Moo-hyun in 2002. Togeth­er, these scenes illu­mi­nate an inter­na­tion­al sys­tem of sym­bols and images. South Korea’s demo­c­ra­t­ic sta­tus is repeat­ed­ly high­light­ed, as if to reassert the nation’s inde­pen­dence under con­di­tions of hyper­moder­ni­ty. These clips are played against Oh Dae-Su’s rather fruit­less escape attempt, offer­ing some form of par­al­lel between the man in cap­tiv­i­ty and the nation itself.

Explic­it­ly nation­al­ist imagery is stan­dard for the Kore­an film indus­try. Fol­low­ing the Japan­ese sur­ren­der of World War II and sub­se­quent end of nation­al occu­pa­tion, South Kore­an cin­e­ma in the inter­war peri­od cen­tered large­ly around themes of lib­er­a­tion. When the indus­try returned from its stag­na­tion dur­ing the Kore­an war and launched into its gold­en age, Kore­an direc­tors made a slew of melo­dra­mas includ­ing Kim Ki-young’s The House­maid (1960), which is now regard­ed as one of the best Kore­an films of all time. How­ev­er, under for­mer gen­er­al Pres­i­dent Park Chung-Hee, the nation, and film indus­try, was sub­ject­ed to strict author­i­tar­i­an rule. Import­ed films were lim­it­ed under a quo­ta sys­tem instan­ti­at­ed by the 1962 Motion Pic­ture Law, result­ing in a boom of domes­tic films devoid of obscen­i­ty, com­mu­nism, or gov­ern­ment critique.

Through­out the 70s, South Korea main­tained some of the strictest cen­sor­ship laws of the devel­oped world. Thin­ly veiled pro­pa­gan­da, along­side the occa­sion­al ​‘host­ess film’ laden with pros­ti­tutes and images of female sac­ri­fice, dom­i­nat­ed the domes­tic box office for over a decade. Although South Kore­an pres­i­dent Roh Tae-woo repealed the decades-old cen­sor­ship laws in 1988, the indus­try still stag­nat­ed at the hands of for­eign cin­e­ma for anoth­er few years. It wasn’t until chae­bols began invest­ing in films that the domes­tic indus­try real­ly recov­ered. The 1997 IMF Cri­sis, which cast a long finan­cial and psy­chic shad­ow over the Kore­an peo­ple, ush­ered in a new and final iter­a­tion of the film indus­try, as chae­bol influ­ence decreased and film­mak­ers were offered, final­ly, exper­i­men­tal freedom.

These were the con­di­tions from which Old­boy emerged: Film­mak­ers embit­tered by decades of silenc­ing and strict screen­ing quo­tas, frus­tra­tion at the hands of face­less cor­po­ra­tions (or cap­tors) that dic­tat­ed the world of the work­ing class-man, increased class divide — in sen­ti­ment and oppor­tu­ni­ty. Dae-su emerges from impris­on­ment into a world that is increas­ing­ly hos­tile to the under­pre­pared. Wak­ing up from hyp­no­sis he encoun­ters a man about to com­mit sui­cide, set against the boxy, repet­i­tive sky­line that was erect­ed as the city rapid­ly mod­ern­ized. Although the film charts Dae-su’s revenge for a local­ized trau­ma, his encoun­ters with oth­er dis­en­fran­chised men expands the scope of his plot to an act of full on class warfare.

His cap­tor, a for­mer school­mate and heir to a chae­bol for­tune, hires a slew of hench­men to tor­ture Dae-su. The labor of exact­ing revenge against an oppres­sive régime much larg­er than the indi­vid­ual is evi­dent in both the con­tent and form of the film. Oldboy’s most infa­mous scene, a sin­gle-shot fight sequence that runs for near­ly three min­utes, took two days and sev­en­teen takes to film. As Dae-su pro­gress­es through the bounds of men, he stum­bles, keels over, bare­ly catch­es his breath. Although one would be hard pressed to con­sid­er Old­boy a work of real­ism, Park Chan-wook does not shy away from the real­i­ty of the effort involved in seek­ing vengeance. Dae-su bleeds, copi­ous­ly, at the hands of him­self and oth­ers. His man­ic gaze, cap­tured with col­or­ful remove by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Chung Chung-hoon, invites the audi­ence to see the world through the delu­sions of a revenge plot. Park does not con­demn or redeem Dae-su; rather, he presents his pro­tag­o­nist as a man dri­ven to the edge.

As an avatar for South Korea, a nation that has been pil­laged, con­quered, occu­pied, and torn apart by regimes much larg­er and more devel­oped than itself for cen­turies, Dae-su embod­ies a ruth­less­ness that has been encod­ed in the nation’s psy­che. For much of the film, Dae-su lives in igno­rance of his sup­posed crimes, remem­ber­ing only the vio­lent con­se­quences. His rev­e­la­tion, and the film’s shock­ing dénoue­ment, does not offer any con­so­la­tion. Trau­ma, Park sug­gests, is not resolved through under­stand­ing the source. No revenge plot can alle­vi­ate the pain. Han, a con­stant suf­fer­ing at the heart of Kore­an cul­ture, has no cure. At least with loos­ened cen­sor­ship, the Kore­an peo­ple can iden­ti­fy and artic­u­late it, now before a glob­al audience.

All of this isn’t to say Old­boy is with­out its plea­sures. For its metaphor­i­cal res­o­nances, the film is ful­ly embod­ied in its lust and gore. For his first meal after cap­tiv­i­ty, Oh Dae-su devours a small octo­pus that squirms its way down his throat. His romance with young sushi chef Mi-Do (Kang Hye-jong) nev­er fails to entrance and sur­prise. Deep hues, high sat­u­ra­tion, and intense con­trast all coa­lesce to a world of height­ened emo­tion and intrigue, bub­bling beneath the city that has come to loom over the glob­al enter­tain­ment indus­try in the past two decades. Old­boy expos­es the dark under­bel­ly of a city and nation that is con­stant­ly per­fect­ing its out­ward image, and 20 years lat­er, still churns stomachs.