OLDBOY

“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone”

The film, on its first viewing hits you like a storm with its powerful characters, deceiving transitions and
unsettling imagery. It is a tale of vengeance and suffering - the suffering of a man who spends 15 years in
confinement without knowing what his crime is and suffering of another man who spends a lifetime
trying to avenge the death of his sister. The plot, in these words seems simple and relatable but as you
go closer and understand the intricacies of the entire film, you realize that the story goes way beyond
just revenge.

Using time as an aid, the film establishes a universe of its own within which a certain film language
becomes prominent. the film starts with a Oh Dae Su, the protagonist holding on to the tie of a man as
he leans backwards from the edge of a skyscraper. The background music as well the camera movement
in the shot is deceiving to some extent as the viewer is lead to believe that Oh Dae Su is the one that is
trying to kill the man but as the story progresses it is revealed that the man was merely the first human
he meets after his 15 year long incarceration. the visual imagery in the film is not just powerful and
aesthetic but is also used as a tool to map out various underlying details about the plot that would
otherwise go unnoticed. The same image is used in he climax of the film where Woo Jin is holding on to
the hand of his sister before she falls in the dam to her death. In the beginning of the film, Oh Dae Su is
in the police station under custody and by his drunken behavior and misconduct towards the officers a
part of his character is already revealed. Even though he is a grown man and is known to be a father, he
is acting rude and uncompromising, landing himself in trouble on the night of his own daughter’s
birthday. It is obvious that he yearns to be a good father as he lovingly talks about the present he has
bought for his daughter but yet he is unable to stop himself from talking disparagingly even in an official
environment. This scene seems slightly isolated from the rest of the film due to its hand held shot taking
and quick jump cuts but in actuality it sets the base for a whole lot of things that unravel in the film.
after his friend bails him out from the police custody, he is immediately kidnapped and taken hostage by
an unknown personality. Kept in a shabby hotel room with nothing but a television set to keep him
company for 15 years, Oh Dae Su allows the TV set to become his world. Everything he learns,
everything he feels or thinks about stems from what he is watching in the television set. He pounds the
wall with his bare hands and promises to destroy the person who has held him hostage but even if you
want to you don’t completely sympathize with him. He decided to pen down in words all the bad things
he has done in his life to find a clue about his kidnapper and soon enough, he fills four or five notebooks,
back to back with all his wrong doings. It is again established that Oh Dae Su is not an innocent victim of
the situation but could have actually done something to land himself in a position like this. As suddenly
as he was kidnapped he is also released in a bizarre fashion. It is clear that he has gone through a lot of
changes in the last fifteen years as he is now become a vengeful and because of no human contact and
lack of social activity, he is ridiculously responsive to kindness. he walks into a restaurant and meets a
young chef who he thinks he has seen somewhere and strangely, this feeling is mirrored by the girl. This
feeling of déjà vu is explained as he remembers that he has seen her in a cooking show on tv. Again, the
director plays with the revealed and the hidden to make long connection within the film. even though it
is revealed how Dae Su knows the girl, it is left unexplained how Mido – the chef also faintly recognizes
him. This is the first hint that the audience is given regarding the relationship of Mido and Oh Dae Su but
the moment lasts for such a short while that it is hard to linger on it while watching it. This is masterfully
done by placing a scene that will draw your attention more than the previous one as it is during his first
meeting with Mido when he also talks to the person who held him hostage for the first time. This choice
of placing the two events together becomes an integral part of a bigger web carefully spun by Lee Woo
Jin, his kidnapper. Dae Su and Mido become companions for better or for worse and slowly he comes
closer and closer to finding out the identity of his captor. At this point the film which started as a
suspense thriller morphs into a classic tragedy. the scene when he fights the men of the person he
thought was his captor, he is so blinded by his rage and thirst for revenge that he does not stop fighting
even when a knife is stuck on to his back. Even though he single handedly fights and ultimately defeats
more than fifty people during the fight sequence, Oh Dae su is not glorified as a hero. Instead the entire
sequence is a rather painful experience as it is long and throws light on how potent his suffering was
during his captivity. This pain is mirrored in the climax of the film where he finally finds out why he had
been captured and held hostage for fifteen years. The true nature of the relationship between Dae Su
and Mido is revealed by Lee Woo Jin and it finally becomes clear that she is actually Dae Su’s daughter.
In a flashback scene which plays with the notion of the past and the present, it is disclosed that during
high school Dae Su becomes privy to the incestuous relationship between Joo Jin and his sister and
shares this secret with a friend who lets it out in the open. This taints the girl’s reputation and eventually
leads to her death. It seems unlikely, on the surface of it to think that someone who barely acted as a
normal teenage boy at the time deserved a punishment so harsh and prolonged but as the scene plays
out, it is understood that it is not merely revenge that Lee Woo Jin is looking for. Oh Dae Su is under the
impression that the reason why he did not remember this incident was because he was hypnotized by
his captor but Lee Woo Jin spitefully tells him that he forgot only because what happened years ago
during high school did not matter to him. In his well laid out, elaborate plan plan to avenge his sister’s
death, it is not only the depth of the transgression that mattered, but how much Dae Su cared about it.
For him, it was mere gossip but for Lee Woo Jin and his sister, his one trivial act of telling his friend
about what he had discovered altered their lives to such an extent that Woo Jin could never come out of
the trauma and dedicated his entire life to it. The way revenge is used in the film is not in its most basic
form but as a representation of Lee Woo Jin’s memory of the past, mirroring his past with Oh Dae Su’s
present. The intricately planned out plot by Woo Jin was not only to torture Dae Su and extract revenge
out of him, it was in fact to torture himself for the death of his lover/sister. By making Dae Su fall in love
with his own daughter and developing their sexual relationship using hypnotism and well timed
placement of events, he almost re enacts the past except this time Dae Su becomes an image of Woo
Jin’s past. the climax has various visual undertones that give away the complexity and depth of the plot.
it is set in Woo Jin’s penthouse and during the entire scene he is dressing himself up, putting himself
together as if he is getting ready for the culmination of his life. at this point all his plans come together,
all the perspective lines converge. The dressing area of Woo Jin divides itself into four parts and then
comes together just like the pieces of the puzzle laid out by Woo Jin. The film is so well put together, like
a tightly stitched notebook that even on trying no page could ever fall out. Every single event in the film
comes back to answer a question you had not even asked yourself. Voyeurism, for example is used first
in the beginning during Dae Su’s hostage when every action of his is watched and controlled, you are
made to fall under the impression that it is a given how that happens. But later, when it is revealed that
Dae Su also sneaks up on Woo Jin and his sister and watches them silently through the window, you
make that connection between the two events. There are no loose strings in the film, which is why it is
hard, as it usually is with Korean Cinema, to categorize it under a single genre. Though it is a beautiful
and meticulous plot for revenge, it is also a tale of pain and suffering, a tale of love and betrayal. Beyond
all of this, the added component of incest makes it even more painful and hard hitting. Therefore, it
becomes a prime example of the masterful art of Korean storytelling.