And now for another of Orren's awesome and usually long posts =]
The film starts with a black screen, some non diagetic music, played on piano and violin, it is soft at first and sounds like it is building up to something. It then changes to a faster more electronic sound when you see the protagonist, but his face is hidden by shadow, because the sun is behind him, you see that he is holding something and his hand is shaking, so the object must be fairly heavy, and the camera view is a worm's eye view, so this gives a sense of importance to the character. The next shot is an over the shoulder shot and looking at what the man is holding, which turns out to be the tie of another man and he is looking very scared and is clinging on to a dog, in the background you can see a street, so the audience assumes that the protagonist is holding the man over the edge of a building and is about to drop, so he may be interrogating the man, the audience may get this impression because of what they have seen on the case of the film and they know that the film is about vengence. The protagonist then says he wants to tell the scared man his story, this confuses the audience as they are not sure what to make of the sitution, or why the protagonist wants to do this. The next shot is a close-up of the protagonists hand, the camera then pans along the tie, to look at the scared man's face, who is looking confused because of what the protagonist just said, this may also be a way of representing the audience. The scared man then says "who the f*** are you?" and the camera switches to look at the protagonist, from a worm's eye view, the camera zooms in on his face, but it is still hidden by the shadow, as he gets ready to say his name, his head tilts to the left and right slightly and shaking a bit, it seems like he is trying to remember what his name is, as he doesn't speak for about 10 seconds, he eventually says, "My name is...", but then then it cuts to a man with blood on his face and a tissue up his nose, to stop the bleeding nose and he then says "Oh Dae-su", which is the protagonists name.
Oh Dae-su is drunk and is being held at a police station, the audience can tell this by the fact that there are men in uniforms and they have handcuffs. in some of the shots Oh Dae-su is behaving and being nice and friendly and showing pictures of his daughter. At one point he is sitting and being quiet, but then, in the next shot, he is loud and and tearing his clothes off, with polic officers trying to restrain him, he is then on the floor, topless, and kicking his legs out, like a child, and in the next shot he has been handcuffed to a ring in the wall behind him, he is still topless and the paper is still up his nose, but he is quiet again. The next shot is of Oh Dae-su (clothed again) and his friend, who has come to collect him, the friend is apologising and saying that Oh Dae-su is usually nice and says that he won't let him get drunk and troublesome again; Oh Dae-su is being quiet, but says "have a nice day officer" and that he'll come back and see the officers, to which they reply "don't bother", and Oh Dae-su replies to this with:
"That's up to me assholes" and gives them a possibly insulting gesture before running out of the station, leaving his friend holding his stuff, this shows the contrast in the characters, Oh Dae-su seems not to really care for anybody, whilst his friend seems very caring of him and is very apologetic. This entire scene is shot entirely from what may be the view of one of the police officers, who may be sat behind a desk, the audience gets this impression because when Oh Dae-su or his friend speak, they look directly at the camera, but it is not meant to be in a way that breaks the 4th wall, because he isn't talking to the audience.
The next scene is of Oh Dae-su in a phone box, talking to his daughter, the credits have re-appeared on the left side of the screen. This scene uses a medium shot, showing Oh Dae-su's chest and upwards, he seems cheerful when talking to his daughter, whilst his friend stands outside holding an umbrella, because it's raining, rain may be used as a signifier that something is going to happen (just a random thought), Oh Dae-su then passes the phone to his friend, because he wants to say "happy birthday", as soon as he gets on the phone the camera starts to circle the phonebox and Oh Dae-su disappears from the cameras field of vision, the circling gives the impression that someting important is about to happen; as the camera moves arund to the front of the phone box (where Oh Dae-su was), the camera moves backwards, making the circle wider, this shows that Oh Dae-su is no longer there, the friend then says that Oh Dae-su's wife is on the phone and want to talk to him and he turns around to give Oh Dae-su the phone, only to find that he is no longer there, he looks left and right and can't see him and then he steps out of the phone box to look for him, and he shouts, "Dae-su!", the camera then rises up and watches Oh Dae-su's friend walk backwards and forwards, calling out as a group of people walk past, the camera then hovers over an umbrella with a weird pattern on it, as the camera zooms in, the person moves off, leaving a bag on the floor, in the bag is a pair of wings, the same ones that Oh Dae-su got for his daughter, giving the idea that this was the person who took Oh Dae-su. Throughout this scene there has been very tense non diagetic music, that makes the audience think "oh my! whats going?!?!?".
The opening credits then come in, it has close ups of clock faces, that are composed of a mixture of digital and analogue, they are analogue clock faces, with digital numbers for hands. There are sounds of cuckoo clocks, ticking and a bell making a "dong" sound. The title of the film then appearsand the D and the Y in OLDBOY, turn anticlockwise, but they move like hands on a clock. There is also the sound of a timer running down. The back ground is black and the word OLDBOY looks old and worn.
and now on to a summary of the film:
after the opening credits, you see Oh Dae-su in a room, with no idea of why he is there, and he is held there for 15 years. During his stay, Oh Dae-su is gassed into unconcioussness, hallucinates about ants, he teaches himself to fight and tattoos a tally of each year is he is kept in captivity, he makes a list of all the people he has wronged and who may have wanted to do him harm, and he watches television (using it as a calendar), he attempts suicide by putting his hand throught the tv set. At one point whilst watching tv he finds out that he has been set up for the murder of his wife. Oh Dae-su finds a third chopstick when he is given his meal once, and uses this to start digging an escape route, just as he manages to get out a brick that gives him enough space for his hand to fit through and out in to the rain, he is gassed once more, whilst semi conicous Oh Dae-su is hypnotised, but the reasons for this are not yet explained. When he wakes, Oh Dae-su is wearing a new suit, and has his prison diaries with him, and he meets the man from earlier who is attempting suicide, by jumping off of the roof of this building, Oh Dae-su goes up to him and feels his face and imitates what the man says because he is the first person that he has seen and talked to in years, the man slips backwards and Oh Dae-su grabs him and this leads to the beginning of the film. You then see both men sitting down after Oh Dae-su has told his story and then he leaves before the suicidal man can tell his own story. He goes down an elevator (in which he is scared as hell) and then steals a womans glasses. As he walks away from the building the suicidal man lands on a police car, giving Oh Dae-su the chance to escape. Oh Dae-su wanders the city and gets into a fight with a group of youths, a while afterwards is given a phone and wallet by a stranger, these are from Oh Dae-su's captor, as he carries walking around the city he finds a random restaurant, and meets a sushi chef called Mido, whilst at the restaurant, he receives a phone call from his captor, and whilst sitting in the restaurant, Oh Dae-su falls unconcious, and Mido takes him back to her place. Oh Dae-su decides to find his captor, and so he goes to mulitple take-aways to find out where his food came from when he was imprisoned, and he follows a delivery boy to the building in which he was kept. After torturing the warden for information, Oh Dae-su gets hold of a box of tapes, with recordings of his captor on. Oh Dae-su then has to fight his way past a load of people, who may be guards, this is an amazing fight scene because it is all one continuous take, with no editing, except for one piece of CGI when Oh Dae-su is stabbed in the back, and it is set out like a side scrolling beat 'em up video game, Oh Dae-su then leaves the building and as he wanders the streets of the city, he collapses, but a man picks him up and puts him in a taxi
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