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Their unlikely relationship blossoms in parallel with the unfolding mystery, and eventually becomes part of the tragic game Dae-su is playing with his former captor. No matter where they go or what they do they’re being watched, and unwittingly playing into someone else’s hands. Even when they manage to turn the tables and gain an apparent advantage, the puzzle just gets more complex, and they sink even deeper into the trap. This is the kind of movie where nobody really lives happily ever after, and by the end, it’s hard to tell whether the people who lived are any better off than the people who died. If Stanley Kubrick came back from the dead and used his unholy knowledge of the afterlife to make a film with John Woo, it might be this freaky.

So at this point, if I were to tell you that this is one of my top five favorite films of all time, you'd probably assume that I was the one who just spent 15 years locked in a room watching game shows and punching walls. But the beauty - and the horror - of Oldboy is that each time you start to question the direction of the story, an unexpected turn sets off your imagination again, and fills you with a burning curiosity to know what comes next. Choi's portrayal of Dae-su suggests a far more complex man than the drunken slob we're first allowed to see, and as the mystery begins to unfold, and the unfortunate, simple truth of this character finally bubbles to the surface, it's impossible not to cast aside your judgment and instead, pity him deeply.

What starts out looking like a by the book revenge thriller takes on multiple layers of intrigue and meaning as an intricate web of relationships begins to develop - not just between the people on screen but between the movie itself and the viewer. Park Chan-wook maintains a steady, meditative pace as his camera drifts in and out of the minds of his characters, floating through their lives, peering at them from behind walls and ultimately, transcending time itself in ways that I can only describe as hypnotic. It's hard to say more about the story itself without spoiling it, but I'll say that to call it "improbable" is a bit of an understatement. And the subject matter you're eventually asked to deal with is, for Western audiences, more than a little hard to swallow.
But it doesn't freaking matter.

Oldboy is a fable meant to remind us of the our darker side, the selfish, jaded, and ignorant part of our soul that can either lead us to outright ruin or just prevent us from being the person we were meant to be. And it does this in some very uncompromising ways. And yet, each time I felt tempted to eschew what I was seeing or to recoil in discomfort, I couldn’t. With Oldboy - as he does with most of his work - Park Chan-wook has almost created a fugue-state on film. It’s a beautiful and terrible waking nightmare that leaves you filled with fear, hope, disgust and admiration all at once. In your heart you’ll tell yourself you don’t need to see it again but - and only if you truly love film - your brain will remind you that you have no choice. It’s a brilliant and challenging work of art that you’ll find yourself struggling with for days.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sit under a cold shower and hug myself for a while.

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