Last weekend, Tin Pan Theater opened the 20th Anniversary, 4K remaster of “Oldboy,” the movie that got me irrevocably obsessed with the cinema of South Korea. To this day, “Oldboy” remains one of the finest revenge thrillers of all time. Neon rereleasing it in 2023 is brilliant, as it’s the perfect time for modern audiences hungry for the next “Parasite” to discover the masterpiece.
“Oldboy” follows Oh Dae-su, an alcoholic businessman who gets arrested for public intoxication and misses his young daughter’s birthday. After his release, he is kidnapped and locked in an isolated hotel room with only the TV for company and an identical meal slid through a dog door every day as he slowly becomes a lean and deadly badass, thirsty for revenge. After 15 years, he wakes up in a suitcase on a rooftop with a powerful thirst for vengeance, unraveling the mystery of why he was held captive, along with the violent death of his mysterious kidnappers.
There’s a lot more to the movie than that, with director Park Chan-wook taking inspiration from Oedipus and infusing every painstakingly crafted frame with operatic emotion, brutal intensity and a darkly comedic wink. If “Parasite” was your introduction to South Korean cinema, then “Oldboy” is a logical next step if you want to dive deeper. “Oldboy” ran so “Parasite” could fly.
In fact, if you want to get into the films of South Korea and are interested in a mini-primer, why don’t I just spend the rest of this space leading you in a few of my favorite K-cinema directions.
South Korean cinema (and more specifically the Korean New Wave) should be explored by anyone with more than just a passing interest in movies, because no one else on Earth makes art like they do. They combine stunning formalist framing and shot compositions with a fearlessness in storytelling, cinematography and performance that makes the films feel alive in ways that few American filmmakers have ever achieved.
So, if there were a Mt. Rushmore of Korean New Wave filmmakers (New Wave as in films from the mid-’90s to present day, when the conventions of the entire industry shifted to auteur-driven, fearless filmmaking), who would be on it? I mean, Park Chan-wook would have to be the Washington. Amazingly, “Oldboy” isn’t even his strongest showing as a filmmaker. The goofy romanticism of “I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK,” the sensuously charged atmosphere of his English language debut, “Stoker,” or the profoundly philosophical vampire nightmare “Thirst” all show his bottomless range as a filmmaker. But it’s his 2016 film “The Handmaiden” that truly shows Park as a master auteur.
Next would be Bong Joon-ho, whose film “Parasite” introduced large swaths of Western audiences to the joys of South Korean cinema. Don’t get me wrong, “Parasite” is astounding, but Bong was a genius long before then. His 2003 neo-noir crime thriller “Memories of Murder” is one of the finest serial killer procedurals of all time (only really matched by David Fincher’s “Zodiac”), with 2006’s “The Host” and 2013’s “Snowpiercer” both being bona fide sci-fi classics. But it’s his 2009 psychological thriller “Mother” that just might be his greatest work.
Next would be Kim Jee-woon who, although I think has yet to make his masterpiece, is still responsible for one of the finest ghost stories of the 21st Century with “A Tale of Two Sisters,” an insane genre mashup Western/Action hybrid “The Good, The Bad, The Weird” and my personal favorite South Korean revenge thriller “I Saw the Devil” (starring “Oldboy’s” anti-hero Choi Min-sik as a deeply insane serial killer). Kim is a visionary filmmaker and I know it’s only a matter of time until we get his “Parasite.”
The final slot on Korean Filmmaker Rushmore would have to go to Lee Chang-dong, who, while only directing six feature films since 1997 might actually be the most consistent of them all. The year 1999’s “Peppermint Candy” is an unforgettable gut punch of a drama, 2007’s “Secret Sunshine” and 2010’s “Poetry” both gorgeously explore grief and longing in ways I’ve never experienced, but it’s 2018’s “Burning” that might be the finest movie I’ve talked about so far. This movie will wash over you like an entire mood, leaving you breathless.
You also don’t even have to start at the Korean New Wave. In 1946, “Viva Freedom!” was South Korea’s first film made after they achieved independence from Japan and absolutely worth watching as a historical document. The Golden Age of South Korean cinema went from the mid-’50s to the early ’70s and also has some incredible works to explore. I’d start with the great Kim Ki-young’s “The Housemaid” from 1960 and go from there. Really though, there’s no bad place to start watching South Korean cinema. Just dive in and be swept away.
This article appears in Source Weekly September 7, 2023.
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