Looking Back at Chan-wook Park’s 'Oldboy'

My favorite film of all time is Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy. The film defines the morality of vengeance as vile, leaving someone with nothing but despair and emptiness. Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is a man obsessed with vengeance like a psychedelic drug. He is imprisoned with nothing but food, clothing, and television for 15 years. “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone,” he says to himself. Suicide is an option, but vengeance is more important to him. Dae-su makes a list of the men and women he has caused harm to in the past realizing he himself is a sinner. He shadow-boxes rough walls until his hands are numb and knuckles bleed. His television is his source of time, entertainment, education, friendship, and religion. This is where Dae-su learns his wife has been murdered and he is the primary suspect. Escape and he is a wanted man. “Who could have done this to such a man?” I asked myself at this point of the film. These are my favorite moments of Oldboy.

When I viewed Oldboy for the first time, Chan-wook Park’s ingenious and artsy style inundated me with curiosity. It's plot is an amalgamation of mystery and tragedy which is something nonexistent in Hollywood. But what struck me the most about this film is the way it presents its theme of vengeance: malevolent and purport-less. Oh Dae-su seeks revenge on the man who killed his wife and confined him. Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu), his captor, seeks redemption as well. “Dae-su Oh talks too much,” Woo-jin verbally expresses. Vengeance consumes both of them and their lucidity and goodwill are nonexistent. There is a long-take scene where Dae-su clobbers about six to eight men with a hammer. With many fists thrown to his face and a knife stabbed to his back, his rage makes him an impenetrable beast.

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

Woo-jin’s high school sweetheart was his own sister afore she took her own life falling deep off a cliff and into the ocean. Why? She was impregnated by Dae-su and mortified when her secret love fest with her brother is exposed. After that horrific day, Woo-jin is optically incapacitated by rage and redemption. However, once he gets his revenge, he sends a bullet straight to his head. At first, this cathartic moment did not make any sense to me. It is virtually like the tables have turned. Oh Dae-su, the man we were once rooting for, is now the deplorable guy. This is great storytelling by Chan-wook Park. However, I was still left with the question of “Why did Woo-jin kill himself?” I eventually came up with a theory. Woo-jin’s odyssey for vengeance is like watching your favorite television series: it is all fun while it lasts, but when it is over, you are left with nothing. That is the message Chan-wook Park wants the audience to intake. Revenge is transitory which ultimately leads to a path of despair and shame.

“Dae-su Oh talks too much.”

When Oldboy fades to black, our emotions towards Oh Dae-su’s decision are perplexed and traumatized into numbness. Left with our uncertainties, Park sanctions the viewer to create there own theory for this ambiguous shot. His slanted smile could indicate his immunity towards the hypnosis. Or perhaps he is determinately ecstatic, blissfully nescient of the erroneousness of his love for Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang), which has its own depraved implicative insinuations. This leaves me in rough a situation; conflicted by an answer never to be brought to life.

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