Can We Go Back?
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE FILM OLDBOY, DIRECTED BY PARK CHAN-WOOK
Well, I think it’s about time I wrote something movie-related. I don’t watch as many movies lately as I used to, which is a shame because there’s so many that appeal to me and that I would love to give some of my time to. It’s just difficult to be able to make that commitment, with so much going on and movies extending beyond two hours regularly. Instead of forcing myself through one to pump out some content, I am going to be discussing one of my favourites of all time, the 2003 Korean film Oldboy, directed by Park Chan-Wook.
Trying to avoid any major spoilers for people who haven’t seen it, the film centers around Oh Dae-su, a drunken businessman who is kidnapped on his daughter’s birthday as he is trying to make his way back to her. The kidnappers lock him in a seemingly average hotel room, providing him with food, television, and medical assistance, but not being given any outside interaction besides the shows that play everyday on the TV. Without any knowledge of his captors, he spends his time training and planning an escape, after which he plans on finding his daughter and getting revenge on his captors. However, fifteen years in he is released from his makeshift prison for seemingly no reason, and the hunt begins.
This movie is not a pleasant watch by any means. It is about vengeance and the way that it can eat away at somebody over time, and how our morals can be bent in a way that benefits us personally. From the beginning of the film, we see Oh Dae-su as a relatively well-meaning parent, an overall kind man who has friends and carries plenty of love for his daughter, taking pride in the gift he is set to deliver at the start. He becomes morphed over time, though, into a snarling animal who knows nothing except for pain and anger, with any good intentions in his heart rotted away after the fifteen years he spent imprisoned. He fights with people simply for the sake of fighting and testing his skills shortly after his release, and allows a man to jump from a building after ignoring his pleas for an ear to tell his story. This is a man who has lost everything and can never gain any of it back, with all aspirations he had having been replaced by an urge to damage and maim, to bring those down with him who put him in this position. It’s fitting that this film is in the unofficial Vengeance trilogy, along with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance before it and proceeded by Lady Vengeance, as the film is visceral in the way that it can transform you, turning you into the monster you think you are fighting against.
Throughout the film, Oh Dae-su is entranced by a woman he meets named Mi-do, whom he runs into shortly after his escape in a restaurant. While it comes across as a mostly random encounter, it has actually been planted by the captors from before, with hypnotism being used to ensure that these two would have significant encounters and become involved. At the end of the film, as Dae-su is encountering the mastermind behind his capture, Lee Woo-jin, who threatens the safety and well-being (for lack of a better term to prevent spoilers) of Mi-do. Dae-su reacts viciously, at first with pure anger that devolves into a breakdown, cutting his own tongue off in exchange for forgiveness.. He grovels and degrades himself, begging for redemption and a second chance, despite knowing deep down that he does not deserve it. How far can we go before we are too far gone? At what point do the evils we have committed outweigh the ones we have suffered, leaving us to the dogs to have to handle the consequences of what we have done? Oh Dae-su, despite believing that he did not deserve it, gave himself up for the chance at redemption in the face of a second reckoning in his world. Are we the determining factor as to whether we should be permitted redemption, or is it some outside force that flips a coin for us? It’s left unclear by the end of the film whether Oh Dae-su truly got what he had begged and pleaded for, with the ambiguous ending leaving little hope in the minds of the viewer.
The need for revenge eats away at us. Whether it is something small and inconsequential, like someone being rude to you or a driver cutting you off on the way to work, everybody has felt the need to get back at someone due to being wronged in some form. But to what point is revenge acceptable? Should people stoop to the same lows as their perpetrator for the sake of fairness, or are we then becoming what we are fighting against? Why should we deserve to be forgiven for our retaliation, if we could not find it in ourselves to allow redemption for those we are against? Is it all too late? Or can we go back?