Oldboy 9/16/23
“Revenge is good for your health, but pain will find you again.”
My first experience with Oldboy was years before I watched it, when I decided I would never watch it. This decision came after my sister wanted to talk to me about how crazy the movie was and told me that the plot would probably turn me off. I figured she knew me well enough to pretty accurately gauge my tastes so I let her explain what happened. She was right. I could see no future where I would go out of my way to watch the scenes that she described unfold. Fast forward to Oldboy’s 20th anniversary, and for some reason I agreed to see it in theaters. Perhaps time made me more open or perhaps it made me forget how turned off I was originally. But knowing what I knew, I was locked in from the start and still shocked by several scenes and developments. During the last act of the movie there’s a beautiful internal swell of emotions, where every piece of dialogue, every past piece of information, just everything hits so much harder. For anything that could possibly be said to dismiss this movie, it’s impossible to walk away from it unmoved. you WILL feel something.
This film gave me so much to think about as it pit me against myself. Pretty much any criticism I could give this film feels like is rooted within my uncomfort and not the actual delivery. It’s hard to detach the things I don’t like about Oldboy from my visceral disgust. I believe it’s similar to why I don’t watch horror movies; I don’t want to be distressed and don’t like the things that happen on screen. But it would be so unfair to deny the beauty of Oldboy’s construction and seeing how the spirit of revenge mixes and clashes with the spirit of determination. Even through that sense of revulsion that was present within me for most of the movie, I can’t deny how admirable it is for the intensity of emotion to be depicted so straightforwardly. Part of me views Oldboy as having a lot of shock value events, part of me sees this as big depictions of big feelings.
Something important in my watch was the recorded intro with director Park Chan-Wook. It made me very conscious of the reactions of the audience around me. While I understood some of their reactions, seeing them laugh wholeheartedly at scenes that were already pretty dark just on face value was shocking to me. Even as I knew what they didn’t, I was surprised at how they could turn taking an opportunity to laugh into what felt like making an opportunity to laugh. Still, the reactions of the people around me also played a part into being able to feel real emotions. It was an unforgettable viewing experience that I am not looking forward to repeat any time soon.
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