It was in early 2005 that I first stumbled across the unlikely image of a costumed Korean man lassoing planets in a fit of giddy mania in my local HMV. The DVD in question had ‘Tartan Asia Extreme’ plastered on the header, and since I’d already shat my pants watching Japanese children be put to slaughter in Battle Royale and Sadako crawl out of the TV in Ring, my curiosity was piqued. Park Chan-wook’s hammer-bludgeoning Korean thriller Oldboy had debuted on the same label just one month prior, while Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters were already both in the catalogue. I didn’t know it then, but the first Korean Wave was splashing into the UK – and Save the Green Planet! was its most zany and genre-bending flagship.
A gonzo chamber drama drawing from horror, sci-fi, comedy and even martial arts movies (for one bonkers scene, anyway), Save the Green Planet! was the story of a delusional beekeeper (Shin Ha-kyun) who kidnaps and tortures a furious chemical corporation CEO (Baek Yoon-sik), believing him to be an alien from the planet Andromeda. Partly inspired by a ‘90s conspiracy theory accusing Leonardo DiCaprio of being an alien bent on seducing Earth’s women in a bid for global domination, the movie offered a shotgun blast of hallucinatory colours, MTV-style editing, and an unexpected depth of emotion. Despite initially flopping in its native country upon release in 2003, it’s widely considered one of the greatest Korean movies of all time today.
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Save the Green Planet! returns to the UK for two rare big-screen outings in the weeks ahead via the BFI’s bumper ‘Echoes in Time’ Korean cinema season – so Little White Lies caught up with maverick filmmaker Jang Joon-hwan to reflect on his wildly inventive debut. With Poor Things’ Yorgos Lanthimos having just wrapped shooting a long-speculated Hollywood remake (led by Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons), this riotous cult classic is ripe for rediscovery.
LWLies: Save the Green Planet! was your debut feature — what were your filmmaking ambitions at the time?
Jang Joon-hwan: I’d been classmates with Bong Joon-ho at the Korean Academy of Film Arts – I was a lighting technician on his graduation film, Incoherence (1994), and he was the cinematographer on mine: 2001 Imagine (1994). After that, I worked as an assistant director and then wrote a film script with Bong – which was made into Phantom: the Submarine (Min Byung-chun, 1999). That’s when I decided I should make my own film.
I first envisaged a big project with a superhero — but then I wondered if I could take on a project of this scale on my debut. I decided to cut back and to have only a limited number of spaces and characters that appear, and the script I wrote from that was Save the Green Planet!. My ambition was to create a story that was both compact and explosive.
The film is a real mish-mash of genres. Where did you draw inspiration from?
I wanted to convey aspects of all the different films I had observed and experienced up to that point — so there are lots of homages and parodies. The most obvious ones are films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. More hidden are references to Blade Runner, Dressed to Kill, even The Birds by Hitchcock – as well as Silence of the Lambs.
Elsewhere, I included references to children’s cartoons and the science magazines I’d read when I was young, as well as Japanese animation – and all these reference points blend to create this melting hotpot of a film. There were silly or childish or kitsch visual elements inadvertently and knowingly incorporated as well, so it gives the feel of being in a magic eye. I was very relieved and grateful it turned out the way it did.
Two magnetic characters are at the core of the film. Was there a real-life counterpart that inspired the defiant, captive CEO Kang Man-shik?
When I was growing up, South Korea was rapidly becoming an industrialised society, and it had this period of huge growth that we achieved in a matter of decades. Within that time, there were numerous conflicts and clashes in the media — accidents and incidents leading to arguments and fights, and some companies even mobilised gangsters called the gusadae to commit violence against [protesting] workers.
I kept seeing characters like Kang Man-shik in the media, who could be full of avarice and exploitative of their workers – and so he became a sort of representative figure of this in a villain-like way. Byeong-gu’s house, meanwhile, is set in a coal mining town because images of the coal mine collapse and strike in the ‘70s – which I saw on a black and white TV when I was young – remained vivid in my mind.
What about Lee Byeong-gu, the conspiracy theorist kidnapper?
He was inspired by Annie, the character played by Kathy Bates in the film Misery. I thought it was a really fun film — but I wondered, why was she being depicted as this evil bitch? I started to wonder what a film would look like from Annie’s point of view, and about this very hurt and wounded character becoming immersed and absorbed in their own world.
After I saw Shin Ha-kyun in the [Park Chan-wook] film JSA and the [Jang Jin] film Guns and Talks, I thought he’d be perfect to play this complex, multi-faceted character who could show deep grief and violence, a side that’s soft and gentle, and another side that’s incredibly strong and persistent all in one body.
Save the Green Planet! premiered in Korea just weeks before major hits like Memories of Murder and A Tale of Two Sisters. Park Chan-wook called it “the best Korean film ever”, and Parasite actor Song Kang-ho said he was “deeply moved”. What happened next?
The critics were extremely enthusiastic — such a film had not come out of Korea before. However, when audiences saw the film posters, I don’t think they really understood what the film was about.
The people marketing the film found it challenging – it can be violent or gory, slightly funny, or with a touch of melodrama. But they weren’t honest about this. They just appealed to audiences that this was a comedy – so when they went into the cinema, it contradicted their expectations. I watched the film crash and burn at the box office. It was very painful.
In the West, it is considered a classic of New Korean Cinema. Did local audiences warm to it after the initial release?
I was feeling very discouraged, but I noticed that I was being invited to many international film festivals – which was a surprising and odd experience for me. I would meet the audiences and feel the enthusiasm and I could feel that Korean films were beginning to be loved by international audiences as well.
I won some big awards – not only abroad, but back at home, too: like the Grand Bell and Blue Dragon awards [Jang won Best New Director at Korea’s two most prestigious film awards ceremonies]. It was like this film was in a coma, and became resuscitated by the international response — enabling Korean audiences to revisit the film and watch it again. It was a very personal and dramatic experience. It felt like I was coming back from the dead!
When did conversations about a US remake begin to surface?
Talks started in 2017 or 2018 after my film 1987: When the Day Comes was released. The overseas team at CJ Entertainment suggested we work on an international project, and immediately I thought of Save the Green Planet! – if we made this film in a different film system and with different actors, it could be really fun.
Director Ari Aster (Hereditary) really liked the film — he’d even participated in Q&As after screenings abroad, so we reached out. He told us he thought it would be very meaningful to remake it, and agreed to be a part of it.
We were proceeding with me as director, and I collaborated with American author Will Tracy (Succession; The Menu) to write the script. We were trying our best to progress the project, but due to health reasons I wasn’t able to work for some time – so we contacted director Yorgos Lanthimos, and that’s how we got here!
Why is now an interesting time to remake a film like this?
Of course, it’s very exciting and fun for me – but there is another way to think about it. Our tiny planet hasn’t changed very much, and it remains this very violent world where wars are erupting and people are fighting one another. In that way, I feel it’s also a shame!
‘Echoes In Time: Korean Films of The Golden Age and New Cinema’ is at BFI Southbank until 31 December and includes screenings of Save the Green Planet! on 30 October and 30 November.
The London Korean Film Festival takes place at BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière and Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) from 1 – 13 November.
