Oldboy (Spike Lee, 2013)

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I've somewhat spoiled this for myself by reading some reviews of test screenings and it's definitely an adaptation of Park's film, not a "back to the source" adaptation of the manga.

[Roger Ryan]

New York Times interview with Lee in which he expresses his dismay that his attempt to outdo Chan-wook Park's famous single take hallway fight was edited down against his wishes!

[domino harvey]

Sounds like the producers have systematically wrecked any chance of this being interesting-- why hire Spike Lee if you don't want his film?

[tenia]

Wouldn't be the first time producers spend money to do something, and then spend some more to undo it.

[knives]

I hope at least they'll let him release a director's cut.

[AALFW]

I hope at least they'll let him release a director's cut.

With the Nyman score, of course!

[Kirkinson]

Nyman has said on his Facebook page that his score never got past the demo stage, so unfortunately there's no recording to apply to a director's cut except, presumably, some synth mockups.

[The Narrator Returns]

Nothing but bad news about this one. First, this has been dumped with no advertising in 583 theaters, and FilmDistrict admits it has no plans to expand in the future.

Second, it's expected to make less than $2 million by Sunday.

Third, a poster designer is accusing the production company of ripping off his artwork.

And fourth, this is Spike Lee's response to that.

[conspirator12]

A great work. Weirder, funnier, somehow bleaker than the original.

[oh yeah]

That'll look great on the blu-ray cover

[feihong]

They still plan to put this on blu-ray?

[conspirator12]

That'll look great on the blu-ray cover

Thank you. I can't believe this movie is actually really good. Sorry Spike.

[oh yeah]

That'll look great on the blu-ray cover

Thank you. I can't believe this movie is actually really good. Sorry Spike.

I was being sarcastic actually, but I'll stop now.

I can't say I'm particularly interested in seeing this one -- I found the original, while revelatory on first viewing ages ago, increasingly dumb with further exposure over the years. Actually I think that with Lee this one had the potential to be more interesting, but the trailer seemed to hint at a fairly generic Hollywood thriller. (Though I know trailers are misleading about 95% of the time). Above all I'm just curious as to why on Earth Lee was interested in this material, considering the seamless continuity of the subject matter and milieu of virtually all his previous films. It's not like it's a blockbuster done purely for the money, as we've seen thus far.

[Cronenfly]

I don't follow Lee too closely (especially his recent work), and have not seen this film yet, but a couple of reviews I've read note the 9/11+aftermath parable elements, which might position it next to 25th Hour, at least on a broad thematic level, vis-a-vis Bush Jr.'s America (ditto the Katrina docs). No doubt a superficial connection, but at least on that level it doesn't seem completely out of the blue to me (though it seems that Lee's Oldboy is much less occupied with a specific American locale/sense of place than either of those other works, and indeed the revenge elements may well be generic enough in his version to make this whole line of interpretation a bit too much of a stretch).

[Murdoch]

So it seems I'm the first to offer an opinion on the film. I saw the original a few years ago and based on my recollection of it this version follows the original's plot near verbatim outside of a few changes. Michael Imperioli's character is a pointless addition, a friend the protagonist turns to upon his release but who does little except help Brolin transition to modern society. Elizabeth Olson does a good job with a thankless, underwritten role - former junkie turned helping hand - and the film follows the rather offensive tired thriller ground of making her into a damsel in distress, subjecting her to sexual abuse, and then having the obligatory sex scene with Brolin later on.

SpoilerShow

I understand that the sex was a necessary plot point for the ending to work, but the film just sort of throws it in and, after seeing her bent over and fondled by Sam Jackson, it feels like a poor addition to a film that didn't know what to do with her.

The film gives its protagonist a little more backstory, turning him into a boozing womanizer and the writing hammers you over the head with how despicable a person he is. He develops similar inexplicably Herculean fighting skills as the original's protagonist and watching the film play out there appear to be many elements working against each other, particularly the action movie conceits and its awkward transition into investigating the kidnapper's past.

Despite these criticisms, I did think Lee's version presented a better written conclusion:

SpoilerShow

With Brolin rejecting his daughter and re-entering his motel prison to live the rest of his days. Ashamed of having slept with his daughter and afraid of the repercussions it will have on her if his identity as her father is revealed, he resigns himself to his prison and comes to believe himself so big of a fuck-up that this is the only means he can continue to live without ruining her life further.

My memory of the original's ending is hazy so perhaps this version doesn't veer too far from it. Regardless, Lee's film is mediocre, and most of that falls to the weak script. Reading through this thread, the things altered - the score, the editing for the hallway scene - would not have improved this weak product. While I didn't care for the original film, I did begin this eager to see Lee's take but this is little like a Spike Lee joint and more run-of-the-mill thriller with the original plot's twists and turns to move it along.

[feihong]

The original has a profoundly different ending:

SpoilerShow

In the original, Oh-Daesu contacts the hypnotist who brainwashed him and his daughter and asks her to work that magic upon him again, deleting his memory of all the revelations he has had in the course of his pursuit of vengeance. Then his daughter finds him out in the snow, where the hypnotist left him. Daesu and his daughter hold each other, with the implication being that their intimate relationship will continue as before (she hasn't opened the box offered her by the villains and had revealed for her the personal connection betwixt her and Daesu). Oh-Daesu has an ambiguous look on his face, seeming to vacillate between grin and grimace, and we are left unsure whether the brainwashing worked or not.

It sounds as if the tone of the Spike Lee version is a little more in the American "Puritan" vein,

SpoilerShow

remonstrating Brolin for his naughty incest and leaving him to deal with his guilt over screwing his daughter. In other words, it sounds as if the film joins Brolin's character in his condemnation of himself; whereas, the Korean film is much more ambiguous about the supposed "immorality" of the incest--though the film does recognize that socially this is a major, major taboo (ironically, a seemingly more hated crime in that society than all the fantastic mutilation and murder Daesu gets away with throughout the film). The "moral question" at the center of the original film was more about the notion of one's duty as a witness, judging others for a stolen secret. The point of the imprisonment in the Korean version is to make Oh-Daesu feel empathy for the so-called "villain" of the film, by putting Daesu in the same incestuous position so that Daesu can process that first experience again with vivid emotional hindsight.

Would you say that idea is played out in the American version?

[Murdoch]

SpoilerShow

Not at all, in fact the American version changes the story from the protagonist witnessing the kidnapper's incestuous affair with his sister to him witnessing the kidnapper's sister having sex with some older man and then spreading rumors about her through their school. This flashback is followed by another, gruesome flashback of the kidnapper's father walking through the house and gunning down his family for his daughter's indiscretion. The incest between Brolin and his daughter is simply an act of revenge in the film with little if any relation to what Brolin witnessed.

[feihong]

That's really a drastic change. To my mind, the principal theme of the Korean film is centered upon that idea that the "old boy" of the title inhabits the two stages of life at once.

SpoilerShow

The kidnapper's revenge is ultimately to take the boy who witnesses and judges his incest with callow indiscretion and to invest him with the enlarged notion of empathy and understanding he could feel as an older man. So the "revenge" in the Korean version is twisted and complicated because its ultimate goal is to develop empathy and sympathy. In a strange way, the kidnapper is doing Oh-Daesu a favor. That's why the initial scene of Oh-Daesu acting like a drunken ass is important, rather than merely incidental. We're seeing a man that hasn't "grown up." To him, a crime is a crime and a wrong is a wrong, no matter the motivation, and the idea of incest is sticky and taboo. There is no complexity to his thinking. Released into the world as an older man, his thinking is made immediately more complex by the range of sophisticated situations he encounters (this is offset a little harshly by Park Chan-Wook's tendency to treat supporting players as comic punching-bags, like the would-be suicide atop the building with his dog--Park is still a slightly less sensitive director than his films often require). So the film isn't so much about a revenge, as it is a film which asks questions about the validity of getting revenge. Once we antagonists understand each other, is revenge still an applicable concept?

It sounds as if the American version fully endorses Brolin's drive for revenge, because the film is content with Brolin's character's justification for his actions. So the values of the film, in the American version, have been subtly altered so that they hew closer to a common American mindset: revenge is justified if someone wrongs you (the Korean film is more complicated in its approach to the issue), incest is flat out shameful (the Korean film is particularly ambiguous on this point--indeed, Korean new wave films on the whole display a remarkable openness on the subject of sex, the likes of which is totally alien to American films), and being robbed of youth is a horrible crime (the Korean film is undecided here as well--does the empathy and thoughtfulness Oh-Daesu has gained make for a richer life than he led before his imprisonment? There's a good case in the film for this read).

That's very interesting, because it seems to mortgage all of the complicated ideas in the original film in favor of the original's most brutal excesses; at the same time, the creators of the new film seem oblivious to the idea that the brutality of the first film is justified by the notion that it is portraying an excessive behavior beyond the social norm, which the film does not expressly endorse. The South Korean film is at its heart very troubled by the violence in Oh-Daesu, and very concerned with his arriving at a larger understanding of his situation. So when Oh-Daesu acts out violently, we're seeing him act like a child. The centerpiece single-take fight scene is like a kind of tantrum--it is filmed that way as well, with combatants thrashing around furiously, to little effect. We're not supposed to entirely like this Oh-Daesu, and if we do, then the ending to the South Korean film disabuses us of our complicity with him. The Brolin character sounds like he is far more in the mode of the American "righteous avenger." He's been wronged horribly, and one act of violent revenge might as well be met with an increasingly violent retort. So even though he started the cascade of violence as a teenager, the response to that was so heinous, that the Brolin character becomes justified in his brutal seeking of the truth.

When I showed the Korean film to a group of friends a few years ago, the immediate question which came up when the film was over was why Daesu didn't simply bring a gun to all of his grueling, protracted hand-to-hand battles. There was a kind of provincial disdain for my answer, which was that gun regulation was very aggressive in South Korea, and it would have been difficult enough that Daesu wouldn't even try to obtain a firearm. And yet, there are South Korean films from the era, like A Bittersweet Life, which make great fun out of the protagonist's protracted struggle to get a gun. It's unlikely that the South Korean audience would have found Oh-Daesu's sporting of a pistol (which of course would require his antagonists to also carry firearms) plausible without some explanation. And yet, to the Americans in the room with me it seemed implausible that the character wouldn't simply have and use a gun. I guess my feeling I'm trying to articulate here is that this is still a widely misunderstood movie, that a great deal of it seems to be lost in translation, and, that the filmmakers taking on the American remake seem to have missed all of the intricacies of the original film. In a way, it's difficult to imagine the film being translated into any American idiom. The eccentricity of the original film alone makes such a transfer hard to imagine, but it seems as if in the remake they have thrown out the point of the original film along with the setting.

[matrixschmatrix]

That's a really solid post feihong, thanks for it.