draft..

The use of Vivaldi during one particularly nasty scene made me think of Clockwork Orange. The contrast of the beautiful music with the dark images leaves one ill at ease.The juxtoposistion of the classical music as Dae-su cuts off his tongue makes it scene more uncomfortable and then the silence all that can be heard is Dae-su muffuling in pain. No special effects need just normal diegetic sound of heavy panting, feet shuffeling and a few splashes of water. A lot of diegetic sounds of punching, breathing ect. and also a lot of silence. Only non- diegetic sound is both Dae-su and Woo-jin's narration. The meaning for Dae-su's narration throughout the entire film is that he is the story teller to his own story. Background music is a bit sparce but whenever it is used it usually contradicts what's being viewed and silence is saved for intense moments. There is also a slight sound motif, which is the gunshot. At a moment of an intense scene the sound of the gunshot kills the background sound ad everything goes silent once more. For instance the scene inside woo-jin's penthouse Dae-su fights one of his men and the music gets all intense and everything slows down and gets muted, that is until woo-jin shoots. Another gun shot sound would be during the flashback as soon as woo-jin shoots once more the flashback stops and reality begins.
one interseting scene uses synchronized sound, with picture to create tension and visual artisty. During the scene of Woo-jin's flashback, His still outreached hand over the side of the bridge gets into focus, as his hands starts to curl up and form a pistol a click of the hand and a gunshot later the flashback turns to reality, it was very skillfully done and a lot more affective then a more direct approch would have been.




Jung Jung-hoon's cinematography is stunning. The film is a work of art and has been bueatifully photographed. The movie begins with exterior shots which all are overexposed and a bit blown out and is significantly more of a bluish tone then most of the interiors. Any exterior shots have a sense of being seemingly infinate, everything seems so open and large. The Contrasting interior shots are the opposite the lighting seems candle lit and dim, most of if not all of interior shots are filmed as if in a confined space, like a prison cell. For instance take the mini apartment Dae-su is held captive in it has the essentials but it lacks warmth and humanity. When it comes to set designing in the room the small television, broken down worn in crappy looking apartment kind of portayed or mimiked what a slacker, loser or human hermit's room would look like and a prison. Colors used a lot thoughout the film are red, yellow and purple. Red is used a lot inside the apartment, it was the color of the phone booth in the beggining. At the very end of the film Mido is dressed all in red contrasting the white snow and Dae-su's dark/muted exterior. Red being the color of passion, pain and love it is understandable that Mido be all dressed in red t the very end. The yellow is in the candle lit rooms and the wallpaper of the apartment which might depict anger as does the color red does. Purple is a significant color being that it is the color of the boxes/"gifts" woo-jin gives to Dae-su and the hankerchief Dae-sun uses to cut off his tongue since according to woo-jin "he talked to much."
Mise-en-scene.



how's life in a larger prison.
flash backs
roof top scene/city scenes



Despite its bleakness, like any Shakespeare tragedy, there are moments of humour.
Beginng with the first scene, our protagonist Dae-su is shown drunk in a police station acting a fool, skillful editing makes Dae-su's drunken episode comedic. Later in the film when Dae-su is inprisoned the use of jumpcuts in one particular scene where he punches the wall as he "practices" shows the desperation in his character. The use of cutaways in these scenes is also used to compress time, from what seems a few hours to a few seconds on screen. Park takes full advantage of graphics and animation in Oldboy. The rhythmic editing style used is one of few cuts which builds up tension and forces the viewer to watch the violence or obsurdaty without any disgression. Any other film would cut away right before the extreme violence is shown Oldboy does not. The audience is forced to watch and wait just as Dae-su is forced into imprisonment, making the viewer sympathize more for our protagonist. Oldboy's use of subtle Animation and graphics keeps the film from being anything less then predictible or typical. In one scne Escapee Dae-su decides to seek revenge on the place that imprisoned him, as he stands before the first person in his way there is a pause between Dae-su holding on to his hammer and the unexpected man sitting in his chair, a dotted path appears from his hammer to the man's head which breaks the tension in a comidic way. One of my favorite parts of the film is the animated ant sitting in one isolated area while a sad Mido sits in the opposite side, as Mido discribes that people who dream of ants are lonely. The ant scene was very bizzare, obsure even but it made complete sense and it fit to what was being said. One last thing that is used thoughtout Oldboy is the split screen, mostly used with close ups on one side and action in the other, for instance as woo jin explains his motives and shows some truth,the split side is illustrating what woo jin's explaining.There is a split screen in the confrontation scene which joins Woo-Jin’s half face with Oh Dae-Su’s other half, denoting that the victim and the victimizer share more that we would like to know Although the film consists mostly of continuiy editing with seemless edits,basic shooting sequence and eyeline matches, it is for the sake of the story.



Park Chan-wook's film Oldboy was the second entry in his revenge trilogy. Though thematically it shares a fair amount with its predecessor Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, its overall approach and style are entirely different. The revenge in Oldboy is more more personal then political, in the simplilist of words this is a game of cat and mouse one that takes decades to resolve. It's a philcological battle for each character, the boundaries are there but are they willing to cross them.While the structure is fairly standard, nearly the entire film is from Dae-su's perspective. We know as little about his predicament as he does. No unnesscesary scenes of the villain wringing his hands with pleasure. The film goes along as it would in reality, no amount of special effects can beat the simplicity of silence. The twist that occurs at the end is not some cheaply scripted device, it makes perfect sense, and forces you to reflect on the entire film. Although the film is at points violent, even to the point of extreme it isn't needless or senseless it's raw and reflects the real pain in the characters.For what is done to our protagonist Dae-su it also is vengeance of a very personal kind. According to Park himself, "The constantly recurring theme is the guilty conscience. Because they are always conscious of and obsessed with their wrongdoings, which are committed because they are inherently unavoidable in life, my characters are fundamentally good people. The fact that people have to resort to another type of violence in order to subjugate their initial guilty consciences is the most basic quality of tragedy characteristic in my movies thus far."



What Park achieved with his brilliant use of Hollywood suspense techniques (a narrative that works through delay, and camera movement that intensifies audience participation) goes beyond the simple instillation of fear into the audience. Oldboy constitutes a modern tragedy, a psychological thriller which is loyal to most genre conventions and at the same time broadens genre boundaries by incorporating new narrative elements, such as the open ending and the dysfunctional hero in order to underline the turbulent social circumstances in which the film itself is inscribed.