Or, what happens when you don't book a hotel until the last second
Oldboy served as a short hand for me when I first started watching movies (no, not when I was a child, but a teenager with an active Pirate Bay account). It represented any movie that was fucked up, typically foreign, and especially something I didn’t want my parents to know I watched. I imagine how stoner weirdos felt exchanging VHS copies of Faces of Death, is how me and my friends felt sending links to downloads of Park Chan-wook’s violent, subversive masterpiece.
Oldboy is the kind of movie that when I was 15, I felt like I had to close the door to my bedroom to watch, and couldn’t even start until my parents were asleep. I think I’d rather have been caught watching porn at the time, it would have at least been easier for me to explain. Where Pulp Fiction represented a sort of cool, culture-conscious cinematic peak to me and my loser posse, Oldboy was across the valley, atop a mountain so perverse and unwelcoming, meeting someone else who had seen it was basically a secret handshake entrance to my weird, internet infected circle. I never really understood the movie to be good or bad back then, it was just kind of it’s own uncategorized thing, over in some separate part of my brain, away from movies like Pulp, Donnie Darko and Leon the Professional (my early internet influenced obsessions), unique and undefinable.
Now years later, my horizons have broadened a bit. I’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit in movies, and on the internet, most of which trumps any individual moment in Oldboy. I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure that this was my first time back with Oh Dae-su in nearly a decade, and with that time we’ve both grown. He’s tamer than I remember (for a revenge crazed lunatic) and his world is beautiful and composed, not really the hellish pit I had understood it to be back before I could legally drink or drive. Park Chan-wook’s use of color throughout the movie offers a sort of down the rabbit hole effect, painting rooms in harsh whites, or deep reds, lining them with beady eyed gangsters in bright patterned shirts, and big, slicked back hair.
While the story is layered, twisty and absurd, the way the world is built is precise. The framing of Mi-do tied up against the bed with a pyramid of henchmen emanating from either side is Kubrick level stuff. Director Park is a master, a devious, unrelenting master. I think like all movies with big reveals, nothing will compare to the first time. But, I was lucky enough tonight to be in a crowded screening with plenty of first time viewers, and for a few moments, I felt like I was back behind the screen of my crappy little laptop, as it’s battery burned a holed in my sheets, watching the hammer fall for the very first time.
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