celluloidnotes

Hollywood, over the past five-ten years, has been habitually stealing south-eastern Asian films and remaking them as American studio pictures to disastrous results. There are more examples of this than are really worth enumerating. Nonetheless, the results of remaking a good film like Ju-On into the Hollywood horror-fluff the Grudge is just an example of the thin stylistic remakes. While The Departed (Infernal Affairs) may be an exception to this, by and large the films lack the slick style and beatific color saturation that mark these films. Moreover, the intricate thematic weaves of these films, that truly remark upon society, are completely lost when the films are translated into a film thats sole purpose is to make money in the box office.

This is all leading to a recent announcement by Variety that Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks are trying to obtain the rights to remake Park Chan-Wook’s brilliant 2003 film Oldboy. Oldboy is a film that at a surface level seems to be a revenge story, but underneath the very abrasive violence is a statement on a cultural mindset, a culture that has seen war in ways that America has not seen since the Civil War. Oldboy is a part of trilogy of films that are a meditation on violence in culture and the revenge plot, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance are also included in this trilogy.

In the interest of full disclosure I’m going to have to say that this trilogy is a striking piece of work that I think represents modern cinema in way that few films can, and I fear that a Spielberg remake with Dreamworks and Universal Pictures, and their intent of casting Will Smith in the role of Oh Dae Su is a travesty. Spielberg, while there is no argument about his talents, is not the kind of director, nor is Will Smith the kind of actor, who can handle a film like this. The cultural resonance will be lost, the film will likely be heavily watered down, and the violence that is so integral to the plot will be lost. Now, many people have cried foul on Oldboy for having gratuitous violence, but what they don’t understand, and what I fear a major American studio won’t understand, is that without the graphic level of violence in this film, the commentary is lost. More often than not the director merely alludes to the violence, without showing what is happening directly, he pulls away from the actual action to reveal a small part of the scene that is only loosely tied to the violence, which generally works to great effect. Nonetheless, this violence is the centerpiece of the commentary that is at the heart of Oldboy, and this remake could be a terrible mistake, and one that is already frustrating me even though they have not yet acquired the rights.

Oldboy Trailer: