#714 – I’m a Cyborg, But that’s OK (2006)

I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK (2006)

Film review #714

Director: Park Chan-Wook

SYNOPSIS: A young woman is institutionalised due to thinking that she is a cyborg and refuses to eat. Another patient, who believes he can steal people’s personality traits tries to help her out.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: I’m a Cyborg but That’s OK is a 2006 Korean surreal comedy film. The film centres around Young-goon, who is institutionalised after believing that she is a cyborg and cutting open her wrists to try and insert wires to recharge herself. In the hospital, she continues her belief that she is a cyborg by only communicating with vending machines and refusing to eat, as she believes she needs to recharge by licking batteries and such. The film is structured around the lives of the hospital and their unique, warped perceptions of reality, which lean hard into a surrealist theme. This culminates in a very unique film that is built by it’s cast of likeable, if misguided characters. The trouble with this is that the whole film is very opaque – in the sense it often feels like there’s no real way to get into it in the usual way. I mean this in the sense that everyone’s perceptions of reality are jumbled together and it’s very easy to get lost with who’s feeling what. Even when the film goes more into depth to Young-goon’s history into why she believes she is a cyborg, it never rationalises away the surreal experience. I suppose the aim of the film is to ride the wave of this uncertainty, but I just felt there was a hook missing to generate the necessary empathy with the characters. There’s also an element of making the setting feel more like a circus than a mental hospital, and the depictions of the patient’s conditions perhaps being a bit too quirky and comedic to make them seem genuine.

The film is very bright and colourful while still dealing with some dark themes, which works well. It’s certainly stylish and everything is well considered. The main element of the plot is a developing romance between the two main characters, which doesn’t really click until it’s far too late in the film, as there’s too much going on to get on board with it. Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention while watching this, but it just feels very easy to bounce off this film without ever getting anything from it. I think it’s a well done film that has some charming characters that is meant to be disruptive and surreal but…I don’t know if I should have to work this hard to get into it? Maybe worth a watch to see if it clicks with you (if it doesn’t, I think that’s ok).