Oldboy: A Tragedy in Vengeance

You know, it strikes me as strange that I was introduced to a collegiate department of film with Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook's 'Vengeance Trilogy'. Since then, I don't think I have ever seen anything more intense. I can't lie, after watching these films, I was worried that the serious mindset of college would have me watch films with this magnitude of seriousness and intensity, if that makes any sense. Nonetheless, that is how I felt. It took a while for these films to settle into my memory with understanding; my view of these harsh films had been negative for the most part. It wasn't really because the film was bad, it was more so that the films were so effective that I had a hard time coming to terms with such a deplorable topic of the sordid marriage between torture and vengeance. That being said, I have finally come to terms with this trilogy and the only film I truly accept as a masterpiece is Chan-wook's second feature, Oldboy, though this film still reverberates in my mind with such evocation for the feelings I once felt for this story.

Describing Oldboy's story is slighty amusing considering what happens to the main character, Oh Dae-su. We are introduced to him as a drunk making an irking ruckus at the police station. He is bailed out by his friend and as the friend makes a telephone call in a booth Oh gets kidnapped. Oh awakens to find himself in a lackluster room with a bed, TV, desk, et cetera. No one tells him why he is there, they only give him fried dumplings every, single day. He tells us the only life you have in this situation is through the television, where he finds out he 'killed' his wife, his daughter was sent to a foster home and that when, or if, he is released he would be a wanted man. He slowly begins to sculpt his body so that when he is free he can immediately seek vengeance, punching the walls until his knuckles bleed. Every night a song is played in his room, where gas is released and Oh loses consciousness, awakened to a cleaned room and a new haircut. This process continued for fifteen years, when he is unexpectedly freed. Thus begins his terrible journey of uncovering the truth to his capture and the truth about himself.

This film is heavily stylized, far more that Chan-wook's first feature of the trilogy, the grisly Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, in which much is visualized on the internalization of conflicted, anger, and disorientation. The film doesn't just isolate the physical action of taking vengeance, which a lot of mainstream Hollywood films tend to do. Rather, it observes the physical as well as the psychological turmoil Oh involves himself with. Nevertheless, the physical violence in this film is brutally complex, and it feature's one of the most amazing fight sequences I have ever seen. Oh fights off many of his captors in a cramped hallway. The camera is at a full shot looking into the hallway from the side. The camera tracks left and right slowly to follow Oh's destruction and blind ambition; even a stabbing to the back doesn't stop him. The foes fall over, get back up, stumble over each other, but all of this seems so real and savage, even if we are viewing this event from an unimaginable point of view. Chan-wook loves to mesh pervasive, realistic violence with a hint of the absurd, or the insane. This is an action sequence with substance and style, where the physical is the psychological and vice-versa.

The narrative is just as stylish, where linearity is not a main facet of the function. There are many plot twists I will not dare to utter in this essay if you have never seen it, but I will say that they function more than just the sensationalism that comes with, the initial shock of the unexpected. These twist only amplify the turmoil of Oh and his self-destructive quest of getting equal. By the end, Oh becomes degenerated into something other than what he was, which is what usually happens in these sorts of stories. Yet, the process, both mentally and physically, is carefully constructed into a unique observation of an individual's struggle. After watching this film for the second time, I couldn't help but recall our genre of torture porn that seems to pervade into many cinemas across the country, the Hostels, Saws, and Final Destinations. Much of Oldboy is about torture and is torturous, yet the torture is encapsulated by the mentality of the main character as well as the antagonist. The reality we witness is warped and obfuscated in the ways and means that characters procure; it is a world of distress and tumult. Torture porn is all for sensation; a series of scenes that indulge in the immediacy of shock. There is no motivation, no lasting significance, just the torture. Oldboy is the type of film we may never see in the United States mainly because of the intensity in the sex and violence, but also because of the narrative; our filmmakers stray away from this sort of substance in fear that the film may seems to real. Nonetheless, Oldboy, with all of its stark pandemonium and internal turbulence, it has its grasp of humanity, done so with such style and technique I have only seen Chan-wook succeed in. I still feel much of the horrors I felt when I first viewed it my freshman year. I think the reason for this now is because of how tragic the film becomes.