Park Chan- Wook has prodigious narrative tactics and an eye for aesthetics. These are his most attractive talents as a director. However, his remarkable awareness of human emotions and society is high- flown from politics, economy, and the social landscape of the times truly distinguish him as a soaring filmmaker.
Below is the ranking of some of his films.
1. Oldboy (2003)
The boisterous alcoholic, Oh Dae-Su, is abducted on a rainy night in 1988. He wakes up trapped in a windowless and decaying hotel room for an unclear reason. There, his merciless captors will feed, clothe, and sedate him to keep him from committing suicide. Because his only companion and window to the outside world is the TV in his barren cell. The only thing that keeps Oh Dae-Su going is his daily notebook. The bewildered prisoner is then released on purpose after fifteen years in captivity. He is urged to find down his tormentor and finally receive his payback.
2. The Handmaiden (2016)
Lady Hideko, a lovely and frail Japanese heiress, lives with her tyrannical uncle, Kouzuki, an educated and obsessive collector of rare sexual literature. She has to marry him. Lady Hideko is a sad bird in a gilded cage, confined in a sun-deprived mansion in 1930s Korea under Japanese control. An easy target for Count Fujiwara, a forger and unabashed con man in disguise, who employs Sook-hee. A deft teenage pickpocket, to act as the new handmaiden. Now, in order to take her father’s inheritance, the count needs Sook-hee to persuade the unwitting noblewoman to marry him instead. When the complicated scheme succeeds, he intends to send the young lady to the institution without remorse.
3. I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006)
While working on radios, a young lady who believes she is a cyborg hears voices and wounds herself. She’s in a mental facility, where she doesn’t eat and converses with inanimate objects. Young-goon is the granddaughter of a woman who mistook herself for a mouse and a butcher who lacks social elegance. Il-sun, a ping-pong-playing patient at the facility, notices Young-goon and makes it his mission to get her to eat.
4. Lady Vengeance (2005)
Lee Geum-Ja, the angelic-face single mother who was wrongfully accused of child abduction and murder, gets released from prison after thirteen years. Lee devises a flawless plan of retribution with the help of her cellmates, hell-bent on exacting her sweet revenge on the man responsible for the heinous murder; unfortunately, planning is easier than accomplishing. Lee Geum-Ja now finds herself parts between her unquenchable need for vengeance and the desperate need for atonement as she tries to make amends with the daughter she has to give up.
5. Stoker (2013)
Richard Stoker is killed in a horrific vehicle accident on his daughter’s birthday. As a result, India, his teen daughter, must come to grips with her loss, learn to adjust to the new reality, and reconcile with Evelyn, her cold and emotionally fragile mother. However, the fragile balance between the two ladies will be upset before long when the deceased’s brother, Charles Stoker, reappears. Could India’s cosmopolitan uncle be the one person she has in common with her late father? After all, his seductive appeal has already won both mother and daughter over.
6. Joint Security Area (2000)
Maj. Sophie E. Jean is tasked by the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission to examine a shooting at the shared security area on the border between the two Koreas, in which two troops were killed. The astute Major notices inconsistencies in the survivors’ accounts, and despite her superior’s pressure, she interviews South Korean Sgt. Lee Soo-Hyeok and private Nam Sung-Shik, as well as North Korean Sgt. Oh Kyeong-Pil, revealing a heartbreaking narrative of friendship.
