Our Favorite Films: "Oldboy"

by Arturo Virzi

It’s not very easy to write much about the Korean revenge epic, Oldboy, without writing about the ending. I promise anyone who takes the initiative to watch this film; the ending will be one of the most reliable sources of conversation whenever you meet another person who has seen this film.

In this short article, though, I will try to avoid as many spoilers as I possibly can, and try instead to focus on the other aspects that make Oldboy such a great film.

Oldboy is one of those films that are constantly described as “amazing”, and “incredibly twisted”. Most people wouldn’t recommend the film to anyone, and let’s just say its demographic might be pretty narrow. It is an tale of epic revenge, not the same as an epic tale of revenge, but close nevertheless.

Audiences have a habit to complain about thrillers whenever they’re predictable. Well… if your friend manages to predict Oldboy without being told, then that means he might be as much of a sociopath as Park Chan-wook, the writer and director of the film… I mean that in a good way.

Oldboy is a labyrinthine, visual tour-de-force, feasting the eyes with colorful pop imagery, juxtaposed against horrible acts of violence. Guillermo Del Toro once described the purpose of art as “finding the beauty in the horrible, and finding the horrible in beauty”. Oldboy does both of these, engulfing the viewer in a plethora of emotions, from disgust, fear, and shock, but never trying to be aesthetically displeasing, like most thrillers and horror films tend to be. Oldboy is such a stylistically beautiful film, that it could easily be seen as a visual exercise, but the storyline it carries within complements (and juxtaposes) the visuals so thoroughly that the substance manages to parallel the style.

Oldboy is a thriller down to the bone, though, and it never tries to be more than what it really is. The plot is introduced in the first 10 minutes, and the mystery is solved through a number of fast-paced, quick-cut montages. It could be said that the execution of Oldboy is all just bells and whistles, with an empty core instead of a heart. But that is just not the case, and Oldboy does not trade style for substance… it equates it.

A lot of disturbing things do happen on screen, but one cannot dismiss this as pure shock value when it serves a purpose. Take into account my favorite scene in the film. As Oh-Dae Su begins to remember an important childhood memory, he is literally transported into the past as his young self, and as he recreates the sequence of events, his body switches from his old self to his younger version. The scene in illuminated in a brown sepia tone, giving it the feel of an old photograph and mirroring the antagonist’s passion for the medium. There are no guts spilled, heads cut off, or eyes pulled out during this whole sequence, and yet one can’t help but feel incredibly tense. This scene, and the film as a whole, just clicks.

One of the most popular criticisms of Oldboy is that it’s a character piece with no morality. It’s true, the film’s subject is revenge but at the end there is nothing to be said about it. All we are really left with is an extreme, violent, over-the-top example of vengeance. And my rebuttal to that argument is the following: so what? 

Not every film needs to be a message to be complete, and not every film needs to have underlying themes about existential philosophy either.

Is Oldboy a story that needed to be told? 
Yes, solely because it is a good story.

Can a story stand on its own two feet without an underlying parable? 
Yes, if the story is good then it can stand on its own two feet.

Is a good story enough?
Yes, a good story is more than enough.

A film doesn’t need to bog itself down with limitless amounts of erudite themes in order for it to be considered good. Like I always say: a good story is a good story is a good story is a good story.

Capishe?

Oldboy begins and Oldboy ends. Even if it doesn’t deal with scholarly subjects, it will still generate great argumentative debates like any other great film. And as far as stories go, Oldboy might be one of the most harrowingly original I’ve ever seen in my life. And if originality is not enough, then take its sublime execution into account.

Oldboy is like your favorite record. All of the songs generate a common theme, a similar aesthetic, but they’re all great on their own as well. The prison montage, the elongated hallway fight scene, the raw octopus, and the final set-piece inside the antagonist’s apartment, are all just some of the great sequences in Oldboy. And the fact they’re all carried by an incredible narrative, proves just how much of a virtuoso Mr. Chan-wook really is, who could have striven for a B-movie, and walked the extra mile to give us an A-film.

I’ll, once again, bring up the fact the film’s masterful brilliance lies, mostly, in its devastating, emotionally straining twist. The shocking denouement is a rare feat, not because of its unpredictability, but because we, the audience, have sympathized with the main character and must now watch him crumble further down the hole of oblivion.

It’s no wonder Hollywood has been trying to remake it due to their lack of original ideas. I just hope they never do, because Americanized remakes encourages audience’s fear of subtitles and allow them to avoid watching these wonderful authentically original films. “We’ll edit the story so it can fit with the sensibilities of American audience’s”, comments like these promote the apathy audiences feel towards other foreign films. “I’ll watch the remake”, I was told by a friend of mine. He said the same thing about Slumdog Millionaire days before it was nominated for an Oscar… he now owns it on DVD. One this I can tell you for certain: It won’t be the same. Hollywood executives would never dare faithfully adapt the story of Oldboy. If you skip this magnificent film then all you’ll get is a watered-down version made under the classic Hollywood blockbuster blueprint… starring Will Smith.

Shame. On. You.