Some films you watch, others you experience. Oldboy unquestionably belongs to the latter category. The South Korean cult film by director Park Chan-wook is raw, stylish, morally unsettling, and despite its now iconic status, it remained largely unnoticed by mainstream audiences for years.
Existential Nightmare
Oldboy follows Oh Dae-su, played by Choi Min-sik, a man who is imprisoned in a small room for fifteen years without explanation. No trial, no charges, no answers. Only a television serves as his window to the outside world. When he is released just as suddenly as he was confined, he embarks on an obsessive search for his captor, driven by one all-consuming question: “Why?"
What unfolds is not a classic revenge story, but a darkening puzzle of guilt, memory, and moral boundaries. Park Chan-wook deliberately plays with expectations: every revelation is shocking and changes the way you perceive the film up to that point.
Cinematography as a Moral Statement
Even those who have not seen Oldboy are likely familiar with one scene: Oh Dae-su fighting his way through a hallway full of opponents with a hammer. The scene is filmed in a single long, horizontal take, without quick cuts or heroic music. This is what makes the fight feel painfully human: exhausting, messy, and awkward. Park Chan-wook once said he did not want to make violence look beautiful. And it shows. Every hit hurts, every movement requires effort. Here, cinematography is not decoration, but a moral statement.
Choi Min-sik’s Total Commitment
For his role as Oh Dae-su, Choi Min-sik went to extreme lengths. He lost dozens of kilos, trained for months for the action sequences, and insisted on performing as much as possible himself. The infamous scene in which his character eats a live octopus? That really happened. Multiple times, in fact, because the first take was technically unsatisfactory.
Choi Min-sik later explained that he did not want to portray Oh Dae-su as a hero or a victim, but as someone gradually losing his humanity. This makes his performance so confronting: you feel his rage, but also his confusion and shame.
Not a Box Office Hit, but a Cult Classic
Upon its release in 2003, Oldboy was not a mainstream success. The film was too violent, too strange, and too morally uncomfortable for general audiences. But through film festivals and word of mouth, its reputation grew quickly. Winning the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004 brought international recognition, and since then, Oldboy has consistently appeared on lists of the most influential films of the twenty-first century. Hollywood later attempted a remake, which we will not dwell on, but it proved one thing: Oldboy works precisely because of its cultural context, uncompromising vision, and refusal to spare the viewer.
Are you ready to experience this cult classic on the big screen? On Tuesday, January 27, Cinema Unfiltered will screen Oldboy at Concordia.
