Park Chanwook's 17 Billion Won Unemployment Fantasy, While Capital Is Restructuring Its Workforce [Slate]

Park Chanwook's "No Other Choice" Wraps Privileged Anxiety in the Reality of Workers
Visually Impressive, Yet Stuck in a 17-Year-Old Perspective on Reality

Movie still cut from "No Other Choice"

Director Park Chanwook's new film "No Other Choice" opens with a lavish mansion barbecue party. Veteran paper mill engineer Mansu (played by Lee Byunghun) enjoys a prosperous life with his wife (Son Yejin), two children, two golden retrievers, a mansion, and a greenhouse.

Just as he feels he "has it all," disaster strikes. After 25 years at his company, Mansu is laid off. He devises an extreme plan to get a job at another paper company: he decides to murder his competitors.

The title "No Other Choice" encapsulates Mansu's dismissal and his turn to violence. It points to circumstances beyond an individual's control within social and economic structures. Rather than focusing on the broader context, Director Park zeroes in on Mansu's clumsy scheme and his private sphere. The film transforms the sorrow and despair of unemployment into black comedy and slapstick, creating bizarre moments.

As a genre experiment, the film is intriguing. However, its grasp of reality is clearly limited. Mansu actually has many options: he could sell his house and move, or start a bonsai business. This is quite different from the absolute poverty faced by real laid-off workers. Audiences may see the story as reflecting the anxieties of the privileged class.

Movie still cut from "No Other Choice"

Some of Director Park's cinematic devices also feel somewhat forced. He borrows motifs of toothache and a pistol from Director Yu Hyunmok's "Obaltan" (1961). The toothache symbolizes an unhealed reality and poverty, while the pistol represents violence and despair. While these serve as meaningful cinematic references, they are excessive in representing Mansu's situation. There is a significant disconnect between the postwar poverty of the original film and the party-filled setting in this story.

The process by which Mansu decides to kill his competitors also lacks plausibility. For someone who worked diligently for 25 years to suddenly turn to such extremes, a concrete motivation is needed. The film does not sufficiently depict this transformation. The heavy emphasis on black comedy and slapstick leaves little room to explore the protagonist's inner turmoil.

Lee Byunghun's performance wavers within these constraints. He naturally portrays the awkwardness of someone inexperienced with murder, but fails to fully convey inner conflict and psychological tension. His contradictory choices and internal dilemmas are simplified. Unlike the nuanced pacing and subtle touch of "Decision to Leave" (2022), the exaggerated direction here buries the actor's trademark delicacy.

Movie still cut from "No Other Choice"

The film's visual quality is beyond question. The 17 billion won production budget is poured into meticulous camerawork and production design. The film highlights an obsession with paper, juxtaposing analog thinking with the age of artificial intelligence (AI) to create effective irony. The shots emphasizing paper textures and the greenhouse scenes are especially striking.

However, such visual mastery cannot resolve the story's fundamental problems. Its perspective on unemployment and restructuring remains stuck in the mindset of 17 years ago, when the project was first conceived. The specialty paper Mansu handles is still a field that requires a lot of manpower. In the paper industry, his job would be among the last to feel threatened by AI.

Ironically, it is the film industry itself that is more threatened by AI. CJ ENM, the film's investor and distributor, is actively promoting AI adoption and has carried out more restructuring than its competitors. Rumors of further restructuring persist even now. This month, another group affiliate, CJ CGV, merged several departments. While the film depicts the pain of unemployment, in reality, the companies involved are taking the opposite approach.

Movie still cut from "No Other Choice"

In the end, "No Other Choice" reveals a gap between Park Chanwook's signature cinematic excellence and his grasp of reality. While visually stunning and bold in genre experimentation, the film fails to truly address the essence of unemployment and restructuring. It does not adequately capture the realities of today's labor market or the anxieties of the AI era, instead packaging the worries of the privileged as a universal crisis. Given the high expectations attached to Park Chanwook's name, this work may ultimately fall short of fully meeting them.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.