Chan-wook Park's 2003 thriller Oldboy tells the story of Oh Dae-su, a middle-aged father who is kidnapped mysteriously one day, being left in an abandoned hotel room with little to sustain him. Being kept alive but locked in the room, Dae-su is eventually released after 15 years, and he vows to take his revenge on the person who kept him there for seemingly no reason. Park's unique take on the revenge thriller is fantastically made, intensely raw in its emotion, and uncompromising in the lengths it will go to in order to shock and affect its audience. The movie is thematically and cinematically powerful, as one arresting image after the next cuts to the heart of Dae-su's story, as well as his pain, as he attempts to piece his life back together and focus it on the narrow (and fruitless) objective of revenge. Park's Oldboy demonstrates the cyclical and futile nature of revenge, as well as the often blurry line between man and animal.
The main character, Oh Dae-su (played by Choi Min-sik), is a man desperately in need of re-invention, which makes his transformation into an aggressive killing machine all the more dramatic. When we first see Oh Dae-su, he is wildly different from the man we will follow for the rest of the film; having been taken to the police station for drunk and disorderly conduct, Park lingers on his embarrassing, clownish behavior. Dae-su mouths off, falls down, stumbles, shouts, and even puts on little angel wings (which he had purchased for his daughter that day). In this scene, we see an almost infantilized Dae-su, someone who has yet to mature or grow a sense of responsibility. Here, he is far from in control of his actions, and the image of a grown man wearing little girls' toy wings further robs him of power and control. Looking clean-shaven and chubbier than in the rest of the film, he does not seem like someone who can take care of themselves; this makes him an easy target for his mysterious kidnapper.
The first act of the film, in which Dae-su is trapped in his hotel room prison, establishes the destruction and resurrection of a man into a being of pure hatred, revenge and pity. The hotel room is sparse and dirty, with an impersonal feel that quickly demoralizes and dehumanizes Dae-su; within days, he is grabbing at his mysterious captor's ankles when he comes to deliver food, cursing and wailing, slamming the food tray against the metal door to no avail. This childlike screaming and animalistic behavior is juxtaposed by Dae-su's calm, omniscient narration, noting that "if I had known that it would be 15 years, could it have been easier to endure?" From that point on, after Dae-su reaches rock bottom and understands he cannot beg his way out, he begins to simply pass the time and hone his skills. After the passage of time, we see Dae-su's full breakdown into animalism; his chubby, clean-shaven and clean-cut look is replaced in a jarring smash cut with a Dae-su who is thinner, with a slight beard and a wild lions' mane of hair. He is grinning and baring his teeth at the camera, almost in a feline show of aggression. This image alone establishes the new Dae-su; stripped bare of everything that made him human before, he has simplified his life into training, planning his escape, and learning through television.
Choi Min-sik gives a tremendous performance as Oh Dae-Su, infusing the stock ordinary man out for revenge with a great deal of pathos and vulnerability. His scenes within the hotel room are filled with a quiet desperation, as a lack of human contact strips from him his ability to behave like a normal human being. Instead, he seems to operate on instinct, speaking and acting succinctly to others. Choi's face, a stony visage of resolute aggression and determination, seems to look straight through whoever he meets, and his physicality takes on a Chaplinesque quality, whether it be through the brief moments of physical comedy or the grace and intensity by which he handles the film's few action sequences. Much of Dae-su's animalistic nature is captured perfectly by Choi'e performance: the shaking hand quivering to touch the Korean pop singers on the television as he masturbates, the wild way he swings his hammer at his foes, and the resigned, motionless way he interacts with other normal human beings. In one early scene, Dae-su swallows an entire octopus, whole and alive, symbolically alluding to his new violent and animalistic nature. The scene is filmed to elicit squeamishness and disgust in the viewer, thus further separating Dae-su from the rest of us - this makes the experience of watching Oldboy not unlike watching a strange animal in its cage, fascinated by its behavior (perhaps like Woo-jin did with Dae-su during the latter's imprisonment).
Unlike many revenge thrillers, Oldboy also gives us a sympathetic glimpse into the villain's psyche, allowing us to understand why Woo-jin feels this way about Dae-su. For the first half of the movie, we are oblivious, just as Dae-su is, to the true identity of his kidnapper; once we finally meet Woo-jin, he seems nothing but a sadistic ubervillain with terrible designs for innocent people. However, as Dae-su investigates him further, it is revealed that Woo-jin engaged in an incestuous affair with his sister, Soo-ah, which Dae-su had discovered. Soo-ah committed suicide after her shame was revealed, thus driving Woo-jin to revenge. Though his methods are extreme, and his motivations still morally ambiguous, they are nonetheless understandable - Woo-jin is righteously angry about his sister's death, and sees Dae-su's judgment as the cause of it. With this reveal, Woo-jin is shown to be the real revenge figure in this story, as Dae-su is no longer an innocent in the story (regardless of how long ago or how inconsequential the crime was). Park uses the conflict between these two men to show the constantly perpetuating and escalating cycle of revenge that can occur between people, which can lead to their destruction.
One of the most important facets of the film is Dae-su's relationship with Mi-do, a sushi chef of whom he is enamored (and who has a few secrets of her own even she is unaware of). Mi-do, who goes through the film as a pure innocent, is perhaps the real victim of the film; because of the cyclical and destructive nature of revenge, she becomes a pawn in Woo-jin's and Dae-su's games, dragged into the conflict by an unknowing Dae-su, desperate for human companionship (as well as animalistic sex). Once it is revealed that Mi-do is, unknowingly, Dae-su's daughter, Mi-do becomes yet another casualty in this game of escalating revenge; she is hypnotized into sleeping with her father, and vice versa, in order for Dae-su to commit the sin he exposed Woo-jin of committing.
Dae-su's dogged pursuit of revenge plays into the central theme of the film, which is the difference between man and animal - many characters toe the line between animalistic and human behavior, with Park showing the primal nature of all men. Woo-jin's primary motivation behind Dae-Su's 15-year imprisonment is to break him down into an animal. One line repeated throughout the film is, "Just because I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?" This line is first uttered by the first person Dae-su meets after his release, a depressed young salaryman who wants to kill himself and who is begging Dae-su for absolution. However, because of Dae-su's animal instincts, the only reason he is saved is so that he can have someone to talk to. Later, when Dae-su walks away from the building, the man jumps anyway - Dae-su continues walking, unaffected. This further cements both his alienation from the rest of humanity and his single-minded dedication to his task.
The final scene in the film finalizes Dae-su's new status as someone entirely inhuman, the act of revenge finally taking its toll. After the confrontation in the penthouse, Dae-su is seen in a winter environment (a dramatic visual change from the summer and fall of the rest of the film), meeting the hypnotist who had altered both he and Mi-do into not recognizing each other as father and daughter. Dae-su having written to her, begging to have her erase his memories of the traumatic experiences he had. By stripping him of his memories, his identity - the very essence of who he is - would be eliminated; however, Dae-su finds that preferable to going on as he is. After the hypnosis, he and Mi-do are reunited, presumably to engage their romantic relationship; however, a look of pain creeps across Dae-su's face at the very end of the film, thus leaving it open-ended as to whether or not he was successfully hypnotized. The implication in this final shot, following the theme of the constant and destructive nature of revenge, is that the scars from his experiences will never leave him, and that he will have to continue to carry these horrors in his mind.
The thematic content of the film itself is enhanced (and in many cases, solely illustrated) through the mise-en-scene and cinematographic elements of the film. Chan-wook Park's stunning direction and cinematography help to immerse the viewer in the deeper darkness and desperation of what is, on its surface, a fairly gory revenge thriller. By forcing the camera to linger on the grotesqueries of the story, Park refuses to let us look away at the pure, raw and unadulterated emotion that Dae-su must experience. At the same time, distance is used to great effect in the cinematography, permitting us to see the full extent of Dae-su's rampage of violence and revenge from a cold, calculating position.
One of the most arresting sequences in the film is the fight sequence in the middle of the film, where Dae-su, armed with only a hammer, fights off an entire gang of thugs in a hallway. Park stages the fight in profile, the camera letting us see the entirety of the hallway from one side, the entire, animalistic fight happening in one single shot. In this sequence, we are reminded of the ant that crawls out of Dae-su's arm in one early sequence; one single figure thrusting himself against a swarming mass of other figures, their movements spastic and nervous, uncoordinated. This is not the coldly and exquisitely-choreographed fight of a John Woo film or a wuxia martial-arts epic; it is bloody, messy and frantic, just like the animal Dae-su has become. By letting us view Dae-su's journey from a distance at times, Park reminds us of the futility of his journey, as his efforts seem so small.
In conclusion, Oldboy is a modern masterpiece of form, violence, thematic content and stunning cinematography, elevating the revenge thriller to an elegiac portrait of the difference between man and beast. The film plays with themes of isolation, violence, and the futility of revenge. The very concept of revenge is broken down and deconstructed here, as two characters (Dae-su and Woo-jin) circle each other, attempting to correct wrongs the other has committed against them, no matter how big or small. In the end, the protagonist is turned into a broken man, barely human, his quest for vengeance turning around on him and destroying him in the end. The film, on the whole, is a beautifully filmed and intensely performed treatise on the problematic nature of revenge, and the true animalistic nature that underlies human behavior. The seedy and grotesque content, full of blood and gore, sex and death, establishes a world that is already morally bankrupt, filled with secrets and lies; the implication is that, like Dae-su, we are but a few spins of the wheel away from devolving into animals ourselves.
Works Cited
Park, Chan-wook (dir.). Oldboy. Perf. Choi Min-Sik. Yoo Ji-tae, Kang, Hye-jung. Show East, 2003. Film.
