South Korea is headed for doom. The topic of the country’s demographic and fertility collapse has been a recent hot topic on the internet, with the main reasons ultimately culminating in its harsh work culture and hypercapitalist society. South Korea had been one of the fastest nations to lift itself out of poverty, undergoing rapid post-war industrialisation while navigating torrents of sociopolitical upheavals, authoritarianism, and scars of colonial trauma. I mention all this to underscore the political unconscious (borrowing the term from Fredric Jameson) that exists in Park Chan-Wook’s works, from the class tensions that arise in his Vengeance trilogy to an exploration of feminism and masculinity in his recent films, such as The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave. That is to say, the formulation of his art — i.e. his films — in discussing issues underlying South Korean society. Returning to Jameson, he noted how “every text is at its most fundamental level a political fantasy which in contradictory fashion articulates both the actual and potential social relations which constitute individuals within a specific political economy.“1 Such a conception mirrors Park Chan-Wook’s own raison d’être in being an auteur himself, quoting from his interview with The Guardian, “Film-making […] can help us confront what needs to be confronted; stories on screen can spark discussions in real life […] That is the power of art”. No Other Choice is such a fantasy, a brilliant black comedy that satirises modern Korean society and will bring you one of the most uncomfortable, seat-stirring and nervous laughs you will experience from a film.
You Man-soo (in an all-time performance by Lee Byung-hun) is down on his luck after living a picturesque, almost textbook ideal nuclear family life (although with a not-so-straightforward origin story). The film opens with him cooking barbecue with his beautiful wife (a physical description that is relevant in the story), Yoo Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) and their two children. It is a sunny day in their gorgeous home, which used to belong to his farmer father, an ideal suburbia in tune with the nature surrounding it; an environment that is also ideal for Man-soo’s passion for gardening. Cut to the next scene, a recent American acquisition of the paper factory he works for leads to Man-soo being laid off, despite his two decades of service to the company. “No other choice”, said the American businessman in English, and off to a job-seeking hellscape, Man-soo goes. After no luck in multiple interviews and re-entering the paper industry—even taking up odd part-time jobs in the supermarket, something he sees as beneath his station—Man-soo has ‘no other choice’, and wonders to himself, why not eliminate his competition for the job he vies for? Thus, he descends into madness, in a desperate plea to maintain his family’s status quo, now in a mission to murder his peers.
The first bit of absurdity in the film comes from the corporate-mandated group “therapy” session, if you can call it that, conducted by either the human resources department or a self-help guru the company has hired for the occasion. The guru leads a self-affirmation chant, to be repeated by the fired employees while tapping their necks rhythmically. “I am a good person”, “Losing my job is not my choice”, they all chant. Man-soo repeats this mantra throughout the film, even while committing heinous acts. It is, indeed, the inherent narcissism in capitalism that is on full display here, a system that believes its failures to be no fault of its own and shifts the blame to the ‘invisible’ hands of the market. The company ‘grieves’ the loss of its employees, and hypnotises those laid off to not shift their anger upwards, but rather to the people standing next to them, to see them as competition in their next job hunt. Man-soo, having been fully entrenched, or rather perhaps indoctrinated by the system, fully believes this. To begin with, his position was that of an accomplished middle manager, a station with the delusions of grandeur that he is close to the C-suite above, while being as disposable as any other cog in the wheel for the company. He can be considered quite wealthy, an upper-middle-class, even, yet only his phantom controls the means of production; he is a mere puppet working the production line. Park Chan-wook weaves through this inherent contradiction to tremendous effects, exuding the pungent, effluvious smell of cutthroat capitalism, displaying the intrinsic comedy in the workers-vs-workers struggle.
Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin play their acting roles as a married couple to fabulous, often hilarious results. Moving away from his usual stoic and masculine image, we see Byung-hun at his most desperate and feeble, like a hungry dog who is wholly unsatiated and famished. He is a stubborn man who is unable to accept any other alternatives to aid his situation, thoroughly adamant to re-enter the paper industry despite its clear signs of downturn. Ye-jin’s character is also not a passive housewife, despite the initial projection of her being a typical mother who indulges in high-class activities like tennis and dancing. In truth, she is her husband’s equal in all respects, equally understanding of his situation, while participating in similar audacious behaviour to save her family. Their dysfunctional chemistry and almost twisted love for one another lay the foundation for the film’s thesis. They are the heart of the film, one that you cannot help but slightly root for, despite the macabre play that unfolds before your very eyes.
There is no longer doubt that Park Chan-wook is a living master of the craft, a filmmaker so wholly confident in his skill that you cannot help but marvel at his films. There is a certain sense of ease when watching No Other Choice, much like his other films. So assertive in his message and direction that you feel the trained, guided hands of a surgeon at work behind the camera. The film is sleek and elegant, with clever flair that enhances the emotional impact of the scenes. There are no dull moments, both in visuals and narrative. No Other Choice may, indeed, be the most accessible crowd-pleaser in Chan-wook’s oeuvre, one that I certainly hope will reach far and wide internationally like what Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) accomplished a few years back.
Without spoiling anything, the film’s climax and final act truly show the banality of cutthroat capitalism, portraying proletariat competition to be so utterly fruitless and ludicrous an endeavour that one can only lose, at least in spirit, but unfortunately not in materialistic gains, in partaking in such a decadent feast. Borrowing the words of Friedrich Engels,2 “The competition among the workers is constantly greater than the competition to secure workers” in a system where everyone works for themselves to enrich themselves. With the emergence of AI, automation and means of production beyond the need for the skills and subsistence of the worker, much like what happens to the paper industry in No Other Choice, perhaps something so extreme as an act that Man-soo performs in the film represents the necessity to survive in such a system; to survive in a dying, disappearing South Korea.
Footnotes
- Jameson, F. (1992). The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System. Indiana University Press. ↩︎
- Engels, F. (1845). Condition of the Working Class in England. ↩︎
