Oldboy: Park Chan-wook’s 2003 tale of revenge puts the bestial core of humanity centre stage

Fifteen years after its release, Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy remains a strikingly original work. Although known for its sporadic scenes of grim violence, which today seem relatively restrained, the film is philosophi­cal rather than exploitative, with a focus on revealing the bestial core of humanity that civilisa­tion usually manages to keep in check.

Philosophy does not work well in film unless it’s tied to a strong narrative, and the story, co-written by Park but based on a Japanese manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya, is satisfying. A cataclysmic star turn by veteran actor Choi Min-sik – including a scene in which he eats a live octopus – is so intense, it makes what is actually a psychological fantasy seem real.

The clever script follows an unpredict­able course that reaches a perfectly rational, if thoroughly disturbing, conclusion. It begins with Dae-su (Choi) finding himself locked in a private prison for no apparent reason. As the years tick by, Dae-su gives up trying to work out why he’s been imprisoned and starts to plot revenge on the unknown figure who put him there. After 15 years, Dae-su is released – again, for no discernible reason – and turns detective to find out who ruined his life, and why. Random events suggest, however, that he’s still not entirely free of his captor.

Revenge is a primitive emotion that fulfils no rational function, and it proves the perfect foil for Park to explore what Joseph Conrad called our primal “heart of darkness”. Dae-su’s thirst for revenge is so great that there is no depth he won’t sink to, including self-degradation and humi­liation, to achieve it.

Park carefully distances his character from the stereotypical self-righteous cinema vigilante by making Dae-su aware that he has turned into a beast – the character frequently refers to himself as a monster as he devolves into a being whose new-found primitive emotions are put at the service of his thoroughly modern intelligence. An incredibly clever plot twist that makes the revenge theme a two-way game is startling, and the idea that we may cause others to suffer by committing seemingly trivial acts elevates the story above standard commercial entertainment.

Park, a former movie critic who taught himself filmmaking, says that the works of Greek tragedian Sophocles, particularly the Oedipus plays, informed his interpretation of the Oldboy story, and a brutal theme of incest does share a similarity with the ancient classic.