The Waking Nightmare
by
Howard Schumann
Korean director Chan-wook Park's Oldboy is a grisly,
ultra-violent, but ultimately exhilarating experience, unlike any I
have encountered at the movies this year. A grand prizewinner at last
year's Cannes Film Festival, Oldboy has plenty of action, dark
humor, and an existential mystery that will linger in your mind long
after the final credits have rolled. Based on a manga by Tsuchiya Garon,
the picture has elements of revenge, but to describe it as a "revenge
saga" is perhaps to oversimplify things. It is a complex film about
love and the price we must pay to save it.
The
opening scenes offer a bit of slapstick, as young Oh Daesu (Choi Min-sik)
is hauled into the police station for public drunkenness on his daughter's
birthday. After being bailed out by a friend, he is kidnapped and wakes
up in a bleak room designed to look like a hotel but with a false view
window and a locked steel door. He is being held captive -- but where,
why, by whom, and for how long? He receives no answers, only food fed
through an opening at the bottom of the door. While he's drugged to
sleep by valium gas, his captors come during the night to clean his
room and cut his hair. When he finds out that he must remain there for
fifteen years, his mind begins to unravel and he goes through several
breakdowns.
He
is hypnotized but never meets his captors. The only human faces he sees
are those on the television screen where he learns one day that he is
a suspect in his wife's murder. Driven only by an insane desire to get
out and enact revenge on his jailer, he trains himself daily to stay
in shape by punching the wall. After fifteen years he is released, but
soon finds out that the world outside is as much of a prison as his
room. He is deposited on a roof and finds a man ready to kill himself;
yet he has no compassion, only the single-minded drive to find and kill
those who imprisoned him. Since he has no money or friends, he doesn't
ask questions when a stranger provides him with a cell phone and a wallet.
As
a result of his hypnosis, he is drawn to a restaurant where he meets
a Sushi chef named Mido (Kang Hye-jeong), but he is afraid of trusting
anyone. Daesu is too bent on revenge to care much for human relationships,
but little by little his attachment to Mido grows. Obsessed with finding
the truth for himself, Daesu begins an investigation by sampling food
from the Chinese restaurants in the area to find the one that provided
the food during his captivity.
A
strange blend of horror and beauty, Oldboy is not for the squeamish,
but if you can stand the grimmer moments you will enjoy one of the most
memorable films of the year. Park does not condemn or stand in judgment
of his characters, but allows us to see them as flawed human beings
who have been pushed into taking extreme measures to salvage what remains
of their dignity. If the ending is a bit harsh, the film also has moments
that are tender. Oldboy can be repulsive but it has a great deal
of humanity, and Daesu's pitiful sadness and longing for redemption
reminds us of our own vulnerability.
In
1973, the Chilean military, under the direction of General Augusto Pinochet
and backed by the CIA, overthrew the shaky socialist government of democratically
elected President Salvador Allendé. The coup led to the murder of 3,000
leftist Allendé supporters and the detention of an estimated 250,000
political prisoners. Set against the background of the political instability
that led to the crisis, Andrés Woods' Machuca is the moving
story of the friendship between two boys from different sides of the
social spectrum. Voted the most popular film at the 2004 Vancouver Film
Festival and a major box-office hit in Chile, the semi-autobiographical
film succeeds on both a human and a political level, the different elements
coming together in a final conflagration.
Gonzalo
Infante (Matias Quer) is a chubby, red-faced 11-year old who attends
St. Patrick's private school. He lives in a wealthy neighborhood where
his security is unquestioned, even though he knows that his mother Maria
(Aline Kuppenheim) is having a long-standing affair with a well-to-do
Argentine businessman. Gonzalo is shy and unexpressive and is often
bullied at school. His life changes, however, when when Father McEnroe
(Ernesto Malbran), the priest who runs the school, opens St. Patrick's
to those who are unable to pay, and Gonzalo develops a friendship with
Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mataluna), a youngster who lives in a nearby shantytown.
The inclusion of the marginal students causes unrest at the school.
Fights break out between the two economic classes and parents hastily
call meetings to voice their opposition to the "communist" priest. Gonzalo
protects Pedro from the bullies and later visits Pedro in his home.
Aware
of how much he has, Gonzalo accepts his status without feeling superior,
though Pedro's family refers to him as "the snob." In a subplot, Pedro's
seductive young cousin Silvana (Manuela Martelli) gives both boys an
introduction to sexual pleasure. Though the relationship between the
two boys develops naturally and their innocence allows them to see past
the developing turmoil, the disturbing layers of adult events slowly
begin to threaten their friendship. To pick up some extra money, the
boys attend political rallies and sell Chilean flags to both the Nationalists
and the Communists, but soon emotions escalate and street fights break
out between far-left and far-right militants. The onset of revolt is
signaled by the arrival of two jets flying towards the Presidential
Palace, a seminal event in Chile's history that marked the end of their
short-lived freedom.
One
of Chile's most successful young filmmakers, Woods lets the facts speak
for themselves, and Machuca makes its points with an emotional
power unencumbered by bias or simplistic messages. While the upper middle
class is shown as elitist and disdainful of the working class, Pedro's
family is also not portrayed in glowing terms. In a drunken rage of
victimization, the father tells his son that in a few years, "He [Gonzalo]
will be working for Daddy....You'll be cleaning toilets." The children
are portrayed as simply children without the false glow of larger-than-life
heroism. Although Machuca may ultimately have more of an impact
for Chileans who experienced the coup directly, its theme of young people
caught in the swirl of events beyond their understanding resonates far
beyond the details of this single tragic moment in history.
©2004 Howard Schumann
CineScene
