A Universal Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (26 April 2007)

This film, in spite of its sulfuric reputation, and the direct connection established by the media in the recent Virginia Tech massacre case, is a masterpiece. A boy has been privately imprisoned for fifteen years with no explanation at all, and of course no trial. It was a private initiative taken by some kind of criminal organization controlled by some kind of mafia itself organized by the entrepreneurial rich. When he is freed he tries to find out why he had been imprisoned like that and to get even with those responsible for it, hence to get his vengeance. The film is a lot more powerful than that in fact, than a simple vengeance case. He will understand that he had known something he shouldn't have known, and he had used it against a schoolmate of his though he should have known he should have kept it for himself, he should have kept his trap shut. And his talking, even if very little, was enough to cause the suicide of a person, and it is the schoolmate of his and lover of the suicidee that went through with his own justice. The film becomes great when the victim of this imprisonment understand his mistake, his crime, his responsibility in the death of the other person and mutilates his speaking for him never to speak anymore. But then the schoolmate, quite older of course understand that he caused a lot of suffering, the death of his victim's wife for instance and the disappearance of his daughter. He then brings justice back onto himself. And the Old Boy, meaning the boy who got old in this private prison, can finally tell the story, in writ, to a woman friend of his and he finally rediscovers love, even if mute love. And this time the film becomes a rewriting of Oedipus' myth: the criminal, unaware of his crime, blinds himself when he discovers the amplitude of his criminal attitude and will die slowly in poverty, rejection and begging. Here the responsibility is definitely shared, silence is imposed onto the criminal tongue, but death comes to the avenging initial criminal who did the first unlawful act that was revealed by the Old Boy, and this Old Boy can then rediscover love again via his writing down his own story. Guilt is always a shared human dimension and punishment must also be shared though some innocent people will pay for the crimes of others and the initial criminal will have to pay more than the subsequent ones. The human species is a very barbaric animal race and yet it is haunted by justice.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne