Oldboy

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Template:For Template:Infobox Film Oldboy (Hangul:올드보이) is a 2003 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook based on a Japanese manga of the same name. While the film is a story of revenge and utilizes many elements of film noir to examine the nature of sin and morality, it is ultimately a Greek tragedy. The bare outlines of the plot are reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo (the director himself makes the homage explicit at one point), but the movie diverges very freely from its source. It is the second installment of Park's "vengeance trilogy", following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and followed by Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.

The film won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and had won high praises from director Quentin Tarantino. It is currently being remade in the United States by director Justin Lin, best known for the teen crime drama Better Luck Tomorrow. Zinda, the Bollywood film directed by Sanjay Gupta, also bears a striking resemblance to Oldboy, but is not an officially sanctioned remake. Zinda is now under investigation for violation of copyrights.

Tagline: 15 Years Of Imprisonment...5 Days Of Vengeance.

Contents

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film begins with the silhouette of a man holding onto a rope-like object. Off camera, we hear another man say "What?" in a terrified voice. It is revealed that the silhouette is grasping the necktie of the same person, barely managing to keep him from falling off the edge of a building. The savior then states, in a calm manner, "I said, I wanted to tell you my story." to the bewildered man. "What the hell? Why are you talking like that? Who the fuck are you?" he exclaims. The camera zooms in on the face of the silhouette, partially blocked out by the sun's glare, who says "My...name is..."

The movie then cuts backward to the year 1988. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), is a Korean businessman with a wife and daughter. He is picked up by police for being drunk and disorderly, and has to be bailed out by a close friend. While his friend is in a phonebooth calling Dae-su's daughter, Dae-su is kidnapped by persons unknown.

Image:Oldboy drunk.jpg We then find Dae-su in what appears to be a private prison resembling a shabby hotel room. He has been kept there for two months with no word of who is holding him there or why. He is gassed into unconsciousness whenever he becomes violent or suicidal, or when his holders need access to the room (e.g. to maintain it; cut his hair). His only contact with the outside world is through the television, from which he learns one day that his wife has been murdered, his daughter has been sent to foster parents and that he is himself the prime suspect. This, together with his continued captivity, causes Dae-su to slide into near-madness.

Attempting to get a grip on his sanity and determine his captor, Dae-su fills several notebooks with an autobiography-cum-prison diary, but is unable to figure out who would hate him so profoundly as to imprison him like this. He forces himself to train by shadow boxing, punching at the walls of his prison until thick calluses form on his knuckles. When one of his deliveries of fried dumplings turns out to have an extra metal chopstick, he conceals it and uses it to slowly dig a hole into one of the walls. Over the next fifteen years, he works out, follows current events on TV, and loosens enough bricks to glimpse the outside world once again, only to find that he is near the top of a high-rise building, and escape would be nearly impossible.

Just as abruptly as he was captured, Dae-su is set free on the rooftop of a building with a new suit of clothes and his prison diaries. Adjusting to the bright afternoon light, he sees another man sitting on the edge of the building with his small dog. The first human being he has interacted with in fifteen years, Oh Dae-su is taken aback, unable to have a proper conversation with him. We learn that the man is suicidal and says to Dae-su, "Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?". He then attempts to jump off the edge, but Oh Dae-su grabs his necktie, saving him from death. Dae-su tells the man to delay his death, because he wants to tell him his story, to which he utters "What?" The scene ends at the point in which the movie began.

Image:Oldboy conversation.jpg After relating his story, Oh Dae-su walks off and out of the building. As he is leaving the front entrance, the suicidal man lands on a car behind Dae-su, killing himself and his pet. Dae-su pauses, followed by a wide smile. "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone", he thinks to himself. Throughout the movie, Oh Dae-su uses this quote as a mantra for himself whenever he faces horrible situations. Wandering the streets of the city, Dae-su does not know what to do with his newfound freedom due to his enemies framing him as the murderer of his wife. When a gang of thugs attack him, he finds that his ten out of fifteen years of solitary training have paid off; he fends them off with only his fists. Next Dae-su stands on the street looking fishe swimming in an aquarium, when a homeless man walks up and gives him a wallet fuell of cash and a cellphone. He then meets Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), a girl who works in a sushi bar; she takes pity on Dae-su and takes him in.

A man called Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae) contacts Dae-su via his cellphone, and claims to be the one who imprisoned him. He offers to play a game with Dae-su: Find out why all this happened to him in the next five days. If he fails, Mi-do will die. If he succeeds, Woo-jin will kill himself.

Based on the taste of the dumplings that he ate for 15 years while imprisoned, and having seen the name "Blue Dragon" on a receipt fragment once, Dae-su goes to various Chinese restaurants with "Blue Dragon" in the name in order to determine exactly which restaurant it was. When he finally finds the right one, called "Violet Blue Dragon", he follows the delivery boy on one of his calls to the prison. Once there, he finds and ties up the prison's manager and tortures him by pulling out his teeth with a claw hammer. Dae-su learns from the manager's tape recordings that Woo-jin did indeed have him locked up, but the only reason he would give is: "Oh Dae-su talks too much."

Dae-su and Mi-do grow closer together, and one night the two of them make love while on the road. With Mi-do's help, Dae-su follows a trail that leads back to his old high school, where he discovers Woo-jin was a fellow student. One day, as it turned out, Dae-su had spied on Woo-jin and his sister, Soo-ah, and discovered that they were having an incestuous relationship. Dae-su then mentioned it to one of his own friends, just before transferring to a school in Seoul. Eventualy, the rumor grew out of proportion until it involved Soo-ah becoming pregnant. It is not clear whether this did in fact occur, but believing it and fearing public humiliation, Soo-ah threw herself over a dam, killing herself.

Image:Oldboy fight.jpg Dae-su confronts Woo-jin with all of this information, and suggests further that Woo-jin killed his own sister, afraid of fathering her child. Woo-jin does indeed possess a photo of Soo-ah on the dam, dated the day of her death. But Woo-jin sides-steps these allegations with an even more devastating revelation. He gives Dae-su a photo album, the first picture of which is a family portrait of himself, his wife, and his daughter. The remaining photos in the album are of his daughter growing older, until in horror Dae-su discovers that his daughter is none other than Mi-do. By carefully manipulating both of their lives - Dae-su's since his incarceration and Mi-do's since her father vanished - and hypnotizing each of them independently, Woo-jin was able to cause Dae-su and Mi-do to commit incest as well.

Dae-su is horrified, and begs Woo-jin not to tell Mi-do, even going so far as to cut off his own tongue so that he will never talk too much again. With his thirst for vengeance that was his sole reason for living finally spent, Woo-jin spares Mi-do from knowing and readies to kill himself and Dae-Su with the same bullet. He changes his mind, however, and exits the penthouse in an elevator, leaving Dae-Su alone to be tormented by a tape recording of his incestous love-making with his own daughter. As Woo-jin leaves, we are taken back into his memory of his sister's death. He is holding Soo-ah over the dam, and she says that she has always known that Woo-jin was afraid, that she regrets nothing and asks him to let go of her. She seems at peace, and Woo-jin is tearful and looks afraid. Eventually he releases his grip. The camera is focused on his open hand, which slowly closes as if around a gun, and cocks an imaginary trigger. Next, he fires the real gun into his head in the elevator - he has never forgiven himself for letting his sister die.

Image:Oldboy smugwoojin.jpg In an epilogue set in a wintery landscape, Dae-su goes to a hypnotist (the same one whom Woo-jin hired to hypnotize both Dae-su and Mi-do) and asks for her help to forget the secret. He writes her a letter, since he can no longer talk. The hypnotist said that she originally did not want to help him, but she was touched by his last sentence: "Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live?". It is the same sentence Oh Dae-su heard from the suicidal man who appeared at the beginning of the movie.

The hypnotist tells Oh Dae-su to imagine himself back at Woo-jin's penthouse. She uses hypnosis to split Dae-su into two personalities: the "Monster", who remembers the secret, and the "ignorant" Dae-su, who doesn't.

When the hypnotist asks Dae-su to split into the two people, a reflection of himself appears in the window. The hypnotist tells him that the monster will walk away and for every step he takes, he will age a year and die when he reaches 70. The reflection is the ignorant Dae-Su - he looks on with a neutral, slightly concerned expression, as the monster, grinning forcefully, starts walking away. Dae-Su awakes in the snow. There is no hypnotist, but Mido appears and approaches him - she looks worried at his dishevelled appearance and asks him who he was with. She hugs him, saying, "I love you, Dae-Su." As she hugs him, Dae-Su's face takes on a smile, which slowly turns into a forced grin (of the Monster?), and as the scene fades into black, his face begins to turn into a painful scowl. Does Dae-su still remember...?

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Interpretation of the Ending

The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and we are left with many questions. How much time has passed? Did Dae-Su really meet the hypnotist? Could he finally rid himself of the Monster, who possesses the terrible knowledge? Does Mido know the truth? Her final "I love you" was not in the tone we normally associate with those words; she also adds his name as an afterthought, without looking him in the eyes. When Dae-su awakes in the snow, he appears to have walked away from the chairs he sat in with the hypnotist - does this mean he is still the Monster?

Image:Oldboy hugging.jpg Some believe that the foot steps in the snow symbolized the steps the hypnotist wanted the monster to take. One year was apparently added for each step until the monster died at 70 yrs. Which was why he was laying in the snow, he took those lasts steps as the hypnotized monster, than symbolically died. Only to reawaken as a newer Oh Dae-su.

As the director says in an interview after the film's release, the viewer must make up their own mind about what future they would like the pair to have. Before Woo-jin commits suicide, he says that no matter what, he and his sister always loved each other. "Can you do the same?" he asks Dae-su, and finally the audience.

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Trivia

  • The octopus being eaten alive was no special effect but a real animal; four had to be sacrificed during the making of the movie. Actor Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist, said a prayer for each one.
  • The classic corridor fighting scene took seventeen takes to perfect, and contrary to popular belief, it was actually just one continuous take - there was no editing of any sort. Though the scene has often been compared visually to side scrolling "beat 'em up" video games, director Park Chan-wook has stated the similarity was unintentional.
  • Choi Min-sik lost and gained weight for his role depending on the filming schedule.
  • Computer generated imagery include the ant coming out of Oh Dae-su's arm (according to the making-of on the DVD the whole arm was computer-generated imagery), the ants crawling over Oh Dae-su afterwards and the knife in his back in the infamous corridor fighting scene; moreover computers were used to tint the picture in the high-school flashback scenes and to clean up the lake Woo-jin's sister falls into.
  • When Oh Dae-su wakes up and sees Mi-do read his diary he grabs it and jumps back into bed, bumping his head; the making-of shows the bumping was not intentional but the scene made it into the final version.
  • The final scene's snowy landscape was filmed in New Zealand.
  • As of April 2006, Oldboy is #117 on IMDb's top 250 movies list.
  • Actor Choi Min-sik improvised most of his lines during the confrontation with Woo-jin.
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Controversy over Zinda

Oldboy producers ShowEast are investigating allegations that the Indian film Zinda is very similar to Park Chan-Wook's hit. They talked with the press, saying that the only remake rights contract they ever signed was with Universal in the US, and with no one else, including India. The company announced that after looking at the finished product they will make their decision, which might have legal ramifications.

Indeed, upon release, it was proven that Zinda was nearly identical, down to the hammer from the infamous "one-take" scene, which was used liberally on all the posters. Indian films quite often "remake" American films, sometimes copying the entire film nearly line for line (the recent "Ek Ajnabee" copies "Man on Fire" to such a degree that they used music from Man on Fire in the theatrical trailer), and sometimes only copying the title (the recent "Fight Club" has virtually nothing in common with the American version except the title), but this is one of the first instances in which a non-American film has been remade.

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Cast

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Recurring Cast in Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy

SFMV – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance / OLD - Oldboy / SFLV - Sympathy for Lady Vengeance / JSA – Joint Security Area / THREE - Three... Extremes

  • Song Gang-ho : the Protagonist (father of kidnapped girl) in SFMV = Hired kidnapper in SFLV = north korean sergent in JSA
  • Shin Ha-kyun : the deaf Protagonist of SFMV = Hired kidnapper in SFLV = North Korean soldier in JSA
  • Choi Min-sik : Protagonist in OLD = Antagonist in SFLV
  • Kang Hye-jeong : Heroine in Old = TV News Anchor in SFLV = Heroine of THREE
  • Yu Ji-tae : Lee Woo-Jin (antagonist) of OLD = Ghost of murdered child in SFLV
  • Yun Jin-seo : Sister of Lee Woo-Jin in OLD = Prisoner in SFLV
  • Oh Kwang-rok : Suicidal man in OLD = leader of anarchist gang in SFMV = vengeful father with an ax in SFLV
  • Oh Dal-su : Jail owner in OLD = Bakery owner in SFLV
  • Lee Byung Hun : Hero (south-korean soldier) of JSA = hero (director) of 'Cut'.
  • Lee Young Ae : Heroine of SFLV = Heroine (investigating officer) in JSA
  • Gi Ju-bong : Laid-off Engineer in SFMV = Father of the dead girl in Park Chan-Wook's short film 'Judgement'(1999)
  • Lee Dae-yeon : the Police Detective in SFMV = the Beggar in OLD = Prison Warden in SFLV = South Korean sergent in JSA = Male Actor in a high-school girl uniform in THREE
  • Lee Seung-Sin : Hypnotist in OLD = Wife of Antagonist (Choi Min-sik)in SFLV
  • Park Myeung-shin : Coiffeuse in OLD = Victim's family member in SFLV
  • Kim Byeong-ok : Mr. Han (Bodyguard of Lee Woo-Jin) in OLD = Preacher in SFLV
  • Ji Dae-han : Joo-Hwan (Dae Su's brother) in OLD = Police Detective in SFMV
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Awards

  • Grand Bell Awards – South Korea 2004
    • Best Director – Park Chan-wook
    • Best Actor – Choi Min-sik
    • Best Edition – Kim Sang-beom
    • Best Illumination – Park Hyun-won
    • Best Music – Cho Young-wuk
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See also

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External links

de:Oldboy es:Oldboy fr:Old Boy ko:올드보이 id:Oldboy it:Old Boy ja:オールド・ボーイ pl:Oldboy pt:Oldboy sv:Old Boy - hämnden zh:原罪犯

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