Oldboy (2003)

A brief analysis on Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003)

In Oldboy (2003), directed by Park Chan-wook, Oh Dae-Su is finally released after being imprisoned for 15 years, and has only 5 days to find who captured him and enact his revenge. One of the film’s most pivotal scenes takes place in Lee Woo-jin’s home where Oh Dae-Su is finally face to face with the man responsible for his imprisonment. Dae-su is desperate to know why he was imprisoned for 15 years against his will. Woo-jin, unphased, gives up on the hope of Dae-su coming to a plausible conclusion of his imprisonment on his own terms because rage and revenge has blinded him. After narrating a story of Dae-su’s actions after his release and exposing his conduct was meticulously orchestrated under hypnosis, Woo-jin then presents Dae-su with a present wrapped in a bow and inside, he discovers that his female partner that joined him on his quest for revenge and uncovering his imprisoner, was actually his daughter. Through close ups, split screens and linear effects, Park Chan-wook builds a story where viewers root for the protagonist only to share the same revelation as the character in the end. 

The cinematography and script of Oldboy are restricted where viewers are only shown only one side of the story from the perspective of the main character, Oh Dae-su. The camera angles deliberately focus on things from Dae-su’s perspective (ex. what he’s looking at, his settings etc.). There are no backgrounds on the antagonist, his partner, Mido, which we later find out is his daughter, or even the world around them. This creates a flawed perspective of the character and how they see the world. In other movies, there may be cuts to the antagonist, or even a backstory on the characters surrounding the lead but this is not the case for Oldboy. Both character and viewer are given the same information, Oh Dae-su’s delusions become the viewer’s reality and because the camera gives you no other option, you have no choice but to go along and root for the character. The aggressive transitions and hard cuts also leave no room for asking questions either but forces you to go along with the story and the main characters’ skewed version of reality. 

The editing is just as aggressive as the cinematography. The editing transitions from dramatic close up shots to then zooming out and presenting deep shots with linear perspectives. Every aspect of the scene, from the restricted script, to the aggressive editing plays a role in the final build up where both character and viewers finally understand the history and relationship of both Woojin and Dae-su. After finally being fed so little information throughout the whole film, the audience finally gets a boatload of information and context from Woo-jin’s perspective, the only other perspective towards the end of the film.  Throughout the film, Dae-su believes that his goal was to break out of his imprisonment and find not only freedom but his perpetrator only to find out that he was never free and his physical imprisonment turned into a physiological one that was meticulously orchestrated by Woojin. 

The audience is exploited by Park Chan-Wook because Dae-su finding love after his imprisonment felt like a reward and something that he deserved after being confined, only to be deceived and realise that Woojin’s revenge of him being released after 15 years was part of his grand master plan as a way to get back at Dae-su for spreading rumors about him and his sister’s incestuous relationship that ultimately caused her to commit suicide by also forcing a incestuous father-daughter relationship by releasing him once his daughter turned of age. Both protagonist and viewer alike, realise that the revelation of what Dae-su committed is worse than the 15 years of imprisonment that he was so desperately trying to escape.

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