4 months ago
Director Park Chan-wook‘s No Other Choice (Eojjeolsugaeopda), a satirical acheronian drama thriller based connected Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, had its world premiere successful nan main title astatine nan 82nd Venice Film Festival. The movie garnered important captious attention, receiving a nine-minute opinionated ovation connected nan Lido and later going connected to triumph nan inaugural International People’s Choice Award astatine nan Toronto Film Festival. It has since been selected arsenic South Korea’s entry for nan Best International Feature Film astatine this year’s Oscars.
Neon landed No Other Choice up of its show tally and released it successful nan U.S. connected December 25, grossing $22.6 cardinal to date. It has picked up Golden Globes nominations for Best Picture – Musical aliases Comedy and Non-English Language arsenic good arsenic a nom for prima Byung-hun Lee. It besides scored a Best Pic nom from nan Gotham Awards and a Foreign Language nom from Critics Choice. Critics Choice and nan Gothams besides nominated nan adapted screenplay credited to Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee and Don McKellar.
Set successful Busan, South Korea, nan book instantly establishes nan perfect, albeit precarious, home world of Yoo Man-soo (Lee) and his proud wife, Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin), and their 2 children. The movie opens pinch a deceptively serene scene: Yoo is happily barbecuing an eel, a expected gift for his difficult activity astatine nan mill — unaware that it is, successful fact, a severance gift.
Yoo, an award-winning insubstantial mill manager, is abruptly laid disconnected pinch his colleagues, marking nan opening of his devastating decline. In a infinitesimal of mendacious bravado astatine a group counseling session, nan once-proud begetter declares an optimistic, yet fatally flawed, “In 3 months, I’ll get hired again! I consciousness great!” This declaration is simply a cardinal turning point, mounting into mobility nan vulnerable and morally corrupt oath he takes to reclaim his respect and position arsenic a provider.
The screenplay efficiently charts Yoo’s humiliating and accelerating financial ruin. Months later, he’s reduced to moving astatine a market store. A prospective occupation question and reply — 1 wherever he fails to reply nan seemingly innocuous question, “What is your weakness” — underscores his deep-seated inability to accommodate aliases self-reflect. The worldly challenges heap up: escalating owe bills, downgrading their car, a persistent toothache that mirrors his soul rot, and nan devastating notice of an impending foreclosure connected his puerility home.
In desperation, Yoo hatches a chilling yet darkly logical plan. He posts a occupation advertisement for a fictitious insubstantial institution to solicit résumés from his erstwhile colleagues and manufacture rivals. He past systematically targets and murders nan qualified candidates, attempting to destruct nan title and summation his ain negligible chance of re-employment.
The script’s sharpest attraction is connected nan taxable of personality and masculine pridefulness of unemployed men who position moving successful “lesser” roles arsenic beneath them, contrasting sharply pinch nan accent and applicable sacrifices endured by their wives and families. Yoo is simply a cleanable conveyance for this satire, arsenic his eventual enactment of unit is driven not by necessity but alternatively a pathological request to support an image of success.
The film’s title is derived from a cardinal segment wherever Yoo uses nan tapping method (a coping method taught successful his counseling sessions), repeating nan building “no other choice” arsenic a warped mantra earlier committing 1 of his calculated murders. This brilliantly encapsulates nan acheronian irony: his actions are not a past edifice but a grotesque consequence of his ain inability to judge reality aliases discuss his ego.
Park was fascinated by the novel’s halfway psychological mechanism: nan process by which an “ordinary personification who was perfectly normal, ends up for illustration this successful a societal system.” He notes that nan victims Yoo targets are fundamentally his change egos — men facing nan aforesaid existential crisis. He highlights nan irony that Yoo doesn’t target nan institution aliases nan capitalist strategy that wronged him, but alternatively goes for those who are arsenic as pitiful arsenic he is.
Read nan screenplay below.
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