A common refrain you'll hear in discussions of films built around a revelation that shakes the story to its very foundation is that viewers wish they could wipe their memories just to witness it again for the first time. For those who've seen Park Chan-wook's masterful cinematic scalpel of a vengeance thriller Oldboy, now getting a theatrical re-release for its 20th anniversary, you'll know forgetting is a fundamental part of the grim experience. Its troubled central character Oh Dae-su, played with complete commitment by Choi Min-sik, spends much of the film trying to remember his past in order to understand why he was locked up for 15 years in a mysterious hotel room. Once he recalls why, he will just as desperately wish to forget it all.
This is where the brilliance of Oldboy remains all these decades later. Not only does it reveal all of the endeavors to be a fool's errand — as agonizingly futile as it is darkly funny — but it thrives in the inevitably of the devastation always lurking right out of frame. When everything then rushes into the forefront, resulting in a gut-wrenching finale so meticulously staged you can't look away from it no matter how much you may want to do so, forgetting is no longer an option. Every frame is now forever etched in the memory.
But the emphasis on the twist persistently undersells the film and its enduring legacy. It's the details building up to it that make all subsequent viewings even more potent experiences. Where many other similar works feel like it is all about waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under you, there is a humorous and heartbreaking harmony woven throughout Oldboy, even as we know it is all about to fall apart. It is in every step of the march toward madness that it takes on an earned comical energy. For those who haven't yet seen it, any indications of what this is all about must be done with a light touch to preserve its painful yet poetic punchlines. At the same time, it is one where knowing its reveals doesn't minimize the journey. Rather, it brings grace to each moment. Though the director Park's career-best 2016 film The Handmaiden would build on this tonal tightrope to magnificent effect, it all owes a debt to Oldboy.
Some of this comes from the standout scenes like the famed extended fight in the corridor: For every blow Oh Dae-su lands with his hammer, many more that will soon rain down on him — leaving him cowering and bloody before the very person he thought he could take down to find some sort of salvation. There is a thrill to seeing him battle his way to get closer to the truth, with Park initially playing the film as a classical revenge story, which is tempered by the knowledge that finding it will bring him no peace. This becomes not just a big joke in small moments — like when there is a wonderful comedy cut to a group of men falling out of an elevator after the fight, while Oh Dae-su stands alone — but in a greater existential sense.
Once you know how this all plays out, rather than being robbed of something, it makes the experience richer in a thematic sense even as everything is made all the more revolting in a narrative one. The vast lengths that the characters go to as they try to set things right and the many grave mistakes they unwittingly make along the way become more than what would otherwise be conventional developments. Each is a further twisting of the knife, making moments of discovery into tragedies rather than triumphs. Once you know the truth, watching it again makes it even more darkly humorous — as felt in the lasting image of the camera panning up from an inconsolable Oh Dae-su to his tormentor laughing in his face.
So while the desire to see the film for the first time would perhaps provide a more shocking experience, watching it with the haunting truth in mind is what leaves an indelible mark that can't ever be erased. This brings the humor and the horror into focus, ultimately cutting only deeper each time you enter into it. There is perhaps an inevitability that the film will always be most known for the twist that ties it all together, but it transcends beyond that because of how it lays bare all the broken fragments of Oh Dae-su. When he pieces it all together and finally sees himself reflected back, it is too much for him to bear. As he then tries to forget, the final shot of his shattered smile turning to silent laughter ensures we never will. ♦
