Watch I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK For Free

The Worst Film Ever

Really Surprised!

Admirable film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Park Chan-Wook's incredibly strange romantic art-house film narrates the romance and carnage that follows when a woman who fantasises that she is a cyborg meets a paranoid man in a mental institution who believes that he is steadily transforming into a single dot. Seriously. Whilst the film is kooky and kind of sweet in an eighty foot teddy bear kind of way, the film renders its audience completely oblivious to its message of humanity over conformity and the humanistic fear of helplessness, all because its far too colourful and its ridiculous plot completely overshadows its subplot; unfortunately what's implied is ignored for what is seen.

I remember randomly choosing this movie in a fantasy-horror festival shortly after it's release. After watching i haven't been able to shake of the feeling that it broke the mold of the festival.Although described as romantic comedy I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK is more than that. Yes, there is romance and comedy and yes, there's fantasy and horror elements. I thought i've sensed even some influence from Kusturica, as well, but i might have been wrong. What makes exceptional is that melds the action of SF-action-movies, some gore and art-house.What stayed in my mind has been the depiction of main protagonist's descending into madness. It's been the finest of it's kind in contemporary cinema.

With this I've seen all of Chan-wook Park's films from the 2000s. He's one of my very favorite filmmakers from the last decade. I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay is easily the least of them. The big problem, for me, anyway, is that it represents a genre of films that I really don't care for, that is, the mental hospital picture. Popularized by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it's the kind of film about a bunch of overly quirky patients who do crazy things. This one is also a romantic comedy, so that kind of makes it even worse. Fortunately, Park's unique sensibilities make this film at least somewhat worth watching. Su-jeong Lim plays a girl who was raised as a mouse by her grandmother. As a young adult, she started to believe she was a cyborg who as built to rescue her grandmother, who was taken away by the "white 'uns" (i.e., mental health professionals). She gets herself admitted and hopes to one day kill all of the white 'uns, but her own sympathy is keeping her back (after all, the white 'uns have grandmothers, too). Another patient (Rain, who starred in last year's action flick Ninja Assassin), is a kleptomaniac and Lim asks him to steal her sympathy so she can go through with the murder and mayhem. Just describing it makes me wonder how I liked it at all, but, trust me, Park's musical rhythms and candy-colored visuals are pretty delightful. Lim in particular is fantastic, but the whole cast shines. If you can get past the genre clichés, it's worth a watch.

Having seen Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy and enjoyed them I was keen to see how he would tackle a more light-hearted film. With this he clearly demonstrates that he is not a one trick pony. Here he manages to make a film with plenty of laughs as well as some sadness. It would be too easy for a comedy set in a mental institution to descend into a freak show where we are invited to laugh at the patients condition but he skilfully avoids that.We are introduced to the protagonist Cha Young-goon in the opening sequence where she is working in an electronics factory, she hears a voice telling her what to do and cuts open her arm, pushes wires into the wound, tapes them in place then plugs herself in to the mains. She survives this but as there is clearly something wrong she ends up in a mental institution. As she is convinced that she is a cyborg she refuses to eat, instead spending her lunch time holding a battery. She grows to believe that her purpose is to kill the doctors there but her sympathy is preventing her from doing this because of this she forms a friendship with another patient who claims to be a thief who can steal just about anything... if he can steal Thursday surely he can steal her sympathy. As she isn't eating she is getting weaker and her new friend Park Il-sun is determined to persuade her to eat, he does this by giving her a device which he tells her will enable her to eat food.The film has many poignant moments as well as several surreal scenes such as those where Young-goon believes she is gunning down the medical staff at the facility. The actors did a good job especially Su-jeong Lim in the lead role who had a strange detached look which was somewhat increased by her blonde eyebrows. With this film Park Chan-wook has clearly demonstrated he can make light hearted films.... I certainly wasn't expecting him to make a film that featured yodelling.