Bong Joon Ho’s Faranée vision of the future: NPR

For a long time ago, a current of topical anger crossing the work of the brilliant South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. Parasite was a domestic thriller and an indictment of economic inequalities. The host was a great monster film with a lot to say about environmental decomposition and government inaction. And then there are Bong Hollywood films, like Snowpiecerwho took the rage and climate change of class, and Okjawhich portrays such a dark image of industrialized meat production which, according to many of its viewers, became vegetarian.

Now comes the new bong movie, Mickey 17A bizarre farce and another world which also paints in largely satirical features. The film, adapted from a novel by Edward Ashton, begins in the year 2054, on a distant planet called Niflheim, where a human colony is established. Robert Pattinson embodies Mickey Barnes, a vision of good humor that was hired as a consumable – a human guinea pig.

Mickey’s work is to die several times and live again, to make sure that Niflheim is safe for human housing. And so it is exposed to radiation, viruses and toxins, causing painful and prolonged deaths. His body is thrown into the incinerator, then, through the wonders of human printing technology, a brand new Mickey is regenerated and established with all its past memories. Live, die, repeat: that’s all Mickey knows.

Why someone registering for such an exhausting test? It’s complicated. Let’s just say that Mickey has a lot of money to someone on earth, and he decided that it would be better to flee the planet and die from multiple reversible rather than one and permanent deaths.

While the film opens, 16 previous mickeys have already bitten the dust, and it is Mickey 17 which presents Niflheim, a planet covered with ice and snow. During a dangerous screening mission, a colleague, Jennifer, was killed; Mickey, ironically, survives. Later, back to their complex, another colleague, played by Anamaria Vartolomei, asks Mickey what death looks like. He replies: “It’s terrible, dying. I hate it. No matter how many times I pass it, it’s scary, always. Also. Each time.”

Although you can see the premise as a metaphor for human cloning, Bong is less concerned with the ethical implications than narrative possibilities. He surrounds Mickey with support characters who underline his strange existential solitude. Steven Yeun appears as a friend of dagger who treats Mickey as garbage. Mickey has a loving and united girlfriend – a very good naomi ackie – who is happy to be with him, or any version of him.

As we finally learn, mickeys are not all strictly identical, and Pattinson has fun underline the differences; While most Mickeys are adorable goofballs, at least one is dangerously dislocated. Pattinson has always been an adventurous actor, and it is one of his most inventive performances, marked by a physicity similar to Gumby, an edge of Steve Buscemi in his voice and a deep nucleus of melancholy.

The subtle depths of Pattinson’s performance are not always equaled elsewhere Mickey 17Not this subtlety is really the goal here. Bong is a dizzy maximalist among gender filmmakers. He embraces a high drama, a low comedy and sudden flares of violence, and he likes to juggle a lot of mobile pieces. His talents are great, but they are not always well served by the transition to a large Hollywood canvas.

As Snowpiecer And Okja Before him, Mickey 17 Maybe a lively and difficult to handle a film. He does not have one but two exaggerated villains: the tyrannical chief of the colony of Niflheim, played by Mark Ruffalo, and his devilish wife, played by Toni Collette. They have fun letting go and sneering a storm, and Ruffalo’s handled vocal delivery clearly indicates that he has launched a certain American president. Part of this satire lands, but she also carries terribly thin.

Despite this, Bong is one of the few filmmakers to be able to work on this scale, with an elaborate production conception and complex visual effects, while retaining its artistic signature. Some of the most memorable characters in Mickey 17 are the native inhabitants of Niflheim, which resemble giant white Roly insects with tatou -like shells. They are frightening at first glance, and it is not surprising that the human characters, colonizers at short seen as they are, are determined to eliminate them. Leave it to Bong to return the equation: it gives each of these CGI creatures viscous a soul. It is a rare filmmaker who can make you say “AWW” instead of “yuck”. Even in the midst of several mickeys, Bong’s talent remains unique.