Paul Risker discusses Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy, and its Spike Lee-directed remake…
An individual film can attain infamy for a number of reasons, and one source of infamy is the twist, whether it is a mid-film or end of film twist. It has been exploited by films as diverse as The Crying Game, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Sixth Sense, becoming a defining feature of at least one of these films.
A decade on, and not unlike Chan-wook Park’s 2003 original, Spike Lee’s remake or rather American adaptation of Nobuaki Minegishi’s original source material, exploits the same twist that shocked audiences exactly a decade ago.
It is an interesting creative choice the filmmakers have taken, as those who are familiar with Park’s original film will be aware of the twist, and consequentially it will be deprived of the opportunity to accomplish its expressed intention. The twist reveal is after all a filmmaker playing the role of the magician, creating an uncertain journey in which he confuses and misdirects the audience with smoke and mirrors; an act of gamesmanship if you like.
The line on the Oldboy poster reads, “Ask not why you were imprisoned; ask why you were set free.” It is suggestive of another similarity between original and remake by citing an intention of Lee’s Oldboy to be a playful film.
The line could be from some omnipotent God addressing the character with a touch of the surreal that harks back to the dreamlike original. Park’s film closely bordered on being a science-fiction film, and whilst it came close to looking like our world, it felt like another propelling it towards science-fiction, especially in regards to its meditation on the human condition and what it is to be human.
It is a line that speaks of the game of smoke and mirrors from the outset. Before audiences have even taken their seats it is daring them to try to anticipate the truth behind one man’s quest for revenge, an invitation to solve a mystery. Oldboy is a deadly game that extends beyond the torturous world of the lead protagonist, and not dissimilar to the magic trick, it draws the audience’s attention only to misdirect, setting them up for the unexpected and surprise twist.
Oldboy however plays around not only with the audience and its protagonist, but with the convention of the revenge-thriller, which like the early Western was a moral and sometimes colour coded play. There was a clear distinction between the hero and villain; the protagonist and antagonist. The revenge-thriller is to some extent and purposes the story of a wronged man or woman, and the slight they incur is the catalyst for the violent drama, which then converges on the supposed cathartic act of revenge, or in a dramatic Shakespearian overtone, “Is now the traffic of our stage.”
Whilst Oldboy builds up to an act of revenge that is the convention within the revenge-thriller narrative, the quest for revenge is in itself an act of revenge that never leads to the expected and conventional cathartic act. Instead both films allow the protagonist to continue to spiral deeper into the emotional angst, with the more recent deciding to offer more of an uplifting end by featuring the punishment of the self which is counter-intuitive to the story, of having to live in a hell that is a product of the vengeful act.
Both versions have deliberately sought to undermine the conventions and expectations of the revenge-thriller, which is compounded by posing a moral dilemma. The audience are asked to consider the distinctions between revenge, justice and retaliation, and how these define the characters that are in equal proportions protagonist and antagonist, the distinctions that should be so clear, in fact blurred and stranded on the battlefield of an audience’s subjective opinion.
Oldboy does however offer an interesting insight into the ease at which we can be manipulated by a filmmaker, and just how liberal we are in the act of affording characters the privilege of our sympathy.
Adding a second twist to its narrative in its handling of the sub-genre, Oldboy remains a genre subversive film, and in so doing it transcends itself above being categorised as a nasty little revenge thriller with an unsympathetic or morally questionable protagonist.
With poetic grace Roger Ebert wrote that Oldboy is a “powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.”
Oldboy depicts revenge as a response, and splits open the chasm of revenge to show that its true nature is not physical, but instead emotional. It is one where survival and life are inconsequential, and the physical quest of revenge is rendered ineffective by the emphasis of emotional revenge. In itself Oldboy features uncharacteristic creative choices as it relates to the revenge-thriller format. With its dying or living breath, it remains a provocative film.
Paul Risker is a critic and writer for a number of on-line and print publications, including Little White Lies, Film International, Starburst Magazine, and VideoScope. He is currently based in the United Kingdom.
Originally published January 22, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
