SQUID GAME.

There's no denying the attention getting ability of Netflix' Ojing-eo gei / The Squid Game. Beyond that,  it raises the possibility that we are watching the future of screened entertainment - a (South) Korean series delivered by a streaming service in the original language with sub-titles (the bad guys speak English) in pin sharp 16.9 that blows away the presentations of multi million dollar movies. It appears to have burrowed into world wide awareness.

We have to consider what exactly is happening here and where it came from. The work  really extends the line that runs through Nineteenth Century pulp serials, Fantômas and Dr. Mabuse, Republic and Sam Katzman, Superargo and Diabolik, Santo and Psycho. The imagery is as imposing as theirs - pastel shade Escher mazes, armed, bee featured, scarlet suit heavies, a criminal mastermind in a cubist black face mask (great piece of design). We get a fantastic secret headquarters run by a fiend with a hidden identity. Somewhere along the line, this has got mashed in with the Asian ultra violence cycle - Takashi Miike's Koroshiya 1/Ichi the Killer, Park Chan-wook's Oldeuboi/Old Boy and Chinjeolhan geumjassi / Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and their rip-offs, with Most Dangerous Game / Hounds of Zarroff and the Battle Royales bringing up the rear.

 I will admit to being sucked in, though I only intended to dip into a couple of episodes. They managed to manufacture the most seat gripping cliffhanger that I've run into in all this body of work.

Intriguingly Squid Game comes largely free of Marxist content. The worker heavies are backed by obscenely wealthy V.I.P. gamblers. Deadbeat dad hero Lee Jung-jae is a victim of his own destructive gambling habit, exploited by proletarian Seoul crims who make him sign a deed to his organs in his own blood. His wife is about to take their child to the U.S. out of his reach, though the kid enjoys his fast food birthday party her mum wouldn't have allowed. Even when he makes a killing at the track, this is lifted by girl pick pocket Hoyeon.

In the pit of his desperation, our hero is joined by briefcase man Gong Yoo who he shifts down the subway bench to avoid, saying "I don't believe in Jesus." Turns out the stranger offers the two envelope game where a loss gets a slap and a win a bundle of bank notes. The stranger leaves the business card with the circle, triangle and 'phone number which introduces the Squid Game, an ultra sadistic variation of the childrens' playground activity that opens the series in black and white.

 It's not till the participants get onto the playing field dominated by the giant swiveling fairground doll and see losers gunned down, that they realise what they are into. Characters include aged Oh yeung-su, thug Heo Sung-tae and the lead's old school chum Yoo Seong-ju, who has lost speculating his company's millions. Shrewish Kim Joo-Ryung makes a particularly vivid impression and figures (doubled) in one of the piece's two sex scenes.

Lee Jung-jae & Kim Joo-Ryung

In a character-istically cynical development, players who exercise an escape clause determine that the outside world is more menacing than the game environment. As desperation increases, loyalties fray and standards dissolve. 

Design factor is impressive - the stark dormitory where the beds get stacked in a replica of the maze entrances and cartoon depictions of the games appear on the walls. Bodies are incinerated in pink gift ribbon decorated coffins. Interloper cop Park he-soo penetrates the control area with its luxury observer lounge adorned with human shaped cushions and occupied by glitter faced speculators.

The piece builds to the ferocious episode Four (out of nine) and the general consensus is that it falls away from there. We get the impression the writers painted themselves into a couple of corners - unable to work out plot elements - though the revelation that playing the game is the ultimate incentive isn't bad and, as always in mini series world, needing to keep their options open for a sequel.

Ojing-eo gei / Squid Game.

 

 

 

Showrunner Hwang Dong-hyeok has form after his admired features, the 2011 Do-ga-ni / Silenced (spot Kim Joo-Ryung) and 2014's Soo-sang-han geun-yeo / Miss Granny. His attack is marred by already familiar touches - Stanley Kubric is in there, with the evil patrician turning away from the life and death struggle like Lawrence Olivier in Spartacus, and it's a liberty to make use of "The Blue Danube" again, while the heavy waving from the departing subway carriage immediately calls up distracting memories of William Friedkin's The French Connection. Even so, series drama attention now focuses on Hwang, after an act that it won't be easy for him to follow.

I leave this one with an alarmed feeling that I have seen the future and it might be working. 

 

Barrie Pattison 2022