The Face Knife

First off, the infamous octopus eating scene? Really cool. I’m not some sort of raw food iconoclast and I don’t self-identify with Renfield or anything but I can see that after a decade and a half of fried dumplings, one would want to eat something fresh, you know what I mean? I suppose the symbolism of the octopus has to be linked with the other being that protagonist Oh-Dae Su promises to eat alive - his tormenter, the guy who kept him imprisoned for 15 years without explanation and who must have metaphorical tentacles in every corner of Oh-Dae Su’s life, but just as Oh-Dae Su chokes on the octopus, he….

Let’s stop here for a second. Part of the tendancy I like to call creeping Fincherism, beside the over-fondness for sick greens and mauves in the production design and the desire to move the camera like a spastic playing a car racing video game, is the purposeful insertion of plot “spoilers” (to use the geek argot) that preclude any serious discussion of why or why not a film works, story-wise, unless you want to give the game away to potential viewers. On the one hand, placing the viewer on the same epistemological level as the protagonist (various levels of ignorance) is, you know, in line with certain of my modernist sympathies, but on the other hand, how many times can one’s fictional world get TURNED UPSIDE down before the gesture becomes rote and meaningless? There is a certain kind of nihilism evident in this tendancy - that the agent in the world of the film will never, ever know anything until it’s too late - never know who is controlling their fate, why their fate is being controlled, and just how extensive fate is being controlled. As far as that goes, it’s sort of baby-grade existentialist, but then the conventions of narrative filmmaking require that the plot MUST be explained, and heck, its the work of a superheroically intelligent and/or rich individual WHO FUCKS WITH YOUR REALITY, man, and I can’t abide by that. There’s no DUDE like that, just like you don’t like in God’s potemkin village. The “reveal” is philosophically and cinematically meaningless, and as such these films more or less suck. There’s no need to treat your audience like children in order to build “suspense.” I’m firmly on the side of dramatic irony, where the audience knows more or less what’s going to happen to the protagonist but is forced to look on in horror as he tries and fails to avoid his fate. THAT’s suspense.

So what do you get from Oldboy besides this Fincherism? Not a whole lot. The plot, as such, doesn’t make a lick of sense, unless you buy that there are people out there who really CAN control you and have the whim to do it. The violence can be excrutiating, and the denouement, well, is totally expected and gruesome. It’s a well made film, within the context of it’s genre, but I certainly don’t think it’s a very good film.