Unveiling the Human Psyche: Oldboy (2003)

Written, directed and produced by South Korea’s thriller master, Park Chan-wook, Oldboy (2003) combines elements of with Kafkaesque qualities to create a horrifying vengeance story. It opens up a new element to the traditional thriller/horror genre and will leave you disoriented—partially because of the gore, but mostly because of the psychological head-spinning tricks.

The movie opens with the inner monologue of Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-Sik), the protagonist. He is in a police station, following his routine of drunken belligerency. The plot is set in motion during the first 15 minutes of the film, when that same night he was kidnapped, leaving behind his wife and a daughter. He awakens in a hotel-style prison room where he spends the next fifteen years of his life, indicated by the 15 tally marks he tattoos on his hand during his 6th year. This room comes with its own TV, a bed, and a steel door with a small slot on the bottom to allow the entrance of food by mysterious hands.

His companion becomes the small TV on top of a small desk; this is how he goes to “church,” how he receives news, sexual relief and comedic relief. Every once in a while a tune plays on the speakers in his room signifying the release of a gas rendering him unconscious. When he comes to, he is showered, his clothes are clean and he has a haircut (which he mentions he is not a fan of). After 15 years of complete isolation from human contact and society, Oh Dae-su is released on a roof of a building with no clue as to how he got there, the only thing he must do now to survive is find the person that imprisoned him.

We follow Oh Dae-su through the psychological horror of being released to the real world, after being imprisoned for 15 years of his life. Reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s novels, the world in which our protagonist lives in becomes a nightmarish hell. Oh Dae-su does not know how to communicate with other people and has obviously experienced psychological turmoil; we know that he is not sane, yet I side with Oh Dae-su’s bizarre mind. Perhaps it is because of suburban culture and its shared psychological results. Living in a closed off residential area of town may drive adolescents to feel jailed in. Much like Oh Dae-Su, the teenager living in suburbia feels they are neglected of freedom and living in their own psychological chamber of terror.

Stylistically, Oldboy succeeds at depicting the human need for survival through the way this scene was edited. The scene is done in one continuous long body shot. Here, the viewer finds how much blood Oh Dae-su is willing to spill to enact his vengeance. In the middle of the film, he finds himself in a crowded hall of over a dozen armed men. With his trusty hammer in hand, Oh Dae-su ravages his way through the hall of men, not stopping until he has killed them all.

The scene is horrific and the epic-sounding music in the background keeps you entranced. Winning this fight is an ill fate, and after being stabbed in the back by one of the men in the movie it becomes an impossibility, but Oh Dae-su reemerges, and finishes his battle. His perseverance mirrors the human nature to continue the fight even with battle wounds.

In Aristotle’s Poetics he characterises tragedy as drama, not narrative. Oldboy does a great job at showing not telling. Like in the scene aforementioned, the long-shot and no cuts provides a gruesome depiction of the action and gore of Oh Dae-Su’s journey. In Sophocles’ tragic play “Oedipus Rex,” Oedipus, much like Oh Dae-su (similar sounding names), commits an action that triggers a chain of events leading to their psychological imprisonment. At the end of the movie, Oh Dae-su cuts off his tongue, symbolising his will to never utter a word about another person again. This mirrors Oedipus’ fate, who at the end of the play gauges out his eyes so he won’t see anything beyond his control again.

The most compelling thing about Oldboy is Chan-wook’s interpretation of the deterioration of the human psyche. Not only does he turn it into a revenge-thriller, but he incorporates grief, loneliness, fear and delusion. And he speaks to the fact that all of these things are not mutually exclusive, rather, they work together to form the essence of the human. We are not all sane, and we are all perpetually alone.