Warning in advance: this review has spoilers for every part of the movie. It’s also a rambling, unstructured dump of my thoughts on the film, rather than a coherent film review or academic paper analyzing the movie. Thou hast been forewarned!
To begin, a sampler of the movie’s paper humor, because Park Chan-wook somehow made paper the funniest thing in the world.
“Remember what you said? A-ra, your lips are softer than the highest quality Okamoto tracing paper.”
“Akimoto. Okamoto is a condom brand.”
“A-ra, your lips are softer than the highest quality Akimoto tracing paper.”
I never thought this many paper jokes could be made until I saw this movie – quite impressive.
But paper humor aside, “No Other Choice” is an incredible synthesis of probing the darkest depths of the human soul, criticizing capitalism on many fronts, and blending all this darkness with an abundance of paper jokes. As with all of Park Chan-wook’s films, this one is layered and full of symbolism, making it a delight to think about long after having watched it – which is why I’ve written this post to lay out some of my main thoughts on it.
I think this film is especially remarkable because it takes the ‘capitalism critique’ genre further than Parasite or similar movies have. “No Other Choice” explores the illusory nature of job security, the dehumanization of human beings in the age of acquisitions and automation, and the desperation of people on the losing end of this economic system.
The start of the film created an idyllic imagination of a middle-class Korean family: happy marriage, two kids, two adorable dogs, beautiful house, and a weekend barbecue on a gorgeous summer day. Even as I was watching this, I was predicting it wouldn’t last long – Park Chan-wook’s imagination is too dark for anything so cheerful to last. And I was soon proven right. Shortly after this opening scene, Man-su’s employer, Solar Paper, is bought by an American company, leading to the layoff of Man-su and many of his colleagues.
Man-su’s idyllic life quickly collapses after this. His confidence is wiped out after he realizes that 25 years of service to one company has earned him no kind of job security, and he begins to fail job interviews with comical awkwardness. Man-su’s family is forced to cut back on expenses, downgrading to a cheaper car, sending their two dogs away to Man-su’s in-laws, and putting their house up for sale.
These material losses are accompanied by a breakdown of the warm familial ties seen at the start. Man-su’s daughter Ri-one, who was already antisocial, withdrew even further after the loss of the dogs because of her deep attachment to them. Man-su senses his wife’s growing disappointment with his unemployment and begins suspecting her of infidelity as a result of the growing divide between them. And his son, Si-one, is eventually drawn into crime, thinking that stealing iPhones might bring some more money to his desperate family.
All these factors drive Man-su to the desperation that makes him decide he has “no other choice” but to kill his top job competition. However, the depth of this movie lies exactly in its title – did Man-su really have no other choice? The movie reflects the sinister way in which Korean capitalism drives people against each other, forcing the working class to claw at each other rather than uniting against the bourgeoisie who are the true source of their problems. Man-su had plenty of other choices. He could’ve continued struggling to get a job without resorting to murder, as most sane people would do; he had the choice of leaving the paper industry and trying his luck elsewhere; when carrying out the final murder, he could’ve trusted that Seon-chul would recommend that Moon Paper hire Man-su as a second manager, rather than murdering Seon-chul to take his place. Instead, the desperation caused by unemployment made Man-su feel like he was cornered and had ‘no other choice’ than carrying out these murders. The film brilliantly portrays how the competitive nature of capitalism pits people against each other, even if they should be logically united by a common struggle.
Man-su’s character starts out with a belief in camaraderie among paper men, saying “even a sheet of paper is better lifted together.” Before being laid off, he tried talking to one of the new American owners to plead for his coworkers’ jobs, never suspecting that his own job was at risk as well. However, once Man-su is the one without a job, this humanity evaporates, and he’s suddenly willing to kill his fellow paper men for a better chance at feeding his own family. This transformation is one of the most powerful themes of the movie: how capitalism causes camaraderie and basic humanity to evaporate into a ruthless dog-eat-dog world.
Of course, this is a concept most people are already familiar with; the power of Park Chan-wook’s movie is that he makes it sink in at an emotional level. Man-su’s character visibly changes throughout the film, starting out clumsy and indecisive with the murders and slowly becoming more comfortable with killing. His first abortive murder attempt with the flowering pots turns comical when he can’t decide which pot to use, struggles to lift them, and is then seen by the lady who owns the pots. When he then gets serious and sets out to kill Beom-mo with a gun, his first attempt there is foiled by a snakebite, unfolding into even more comedy as Beom-mo’s wife then starts trying to suck the poison out of the wound while Man-su struggles to video-call his wife without her seeing what’s happening. His second attempt on Beom-mo’s life is even funnier and is one of the most memorable scenes from the film (not summarizing because it’s just too much funniness).
The second and third killings, in contrast, have a more sinister quality to them. The second killing is less drawn out and feels more abrupt, with none of the comedic effects inserted anymore. The camera shot also creates a darker mood during it, with the turbulent waves crashing onto the rocky shore on one side of the shot, and the murder scene on the other side, the two separated by the jagged cliffs in between – again, Park Chan-wook’s filmmaking genius at its peak. This marks a turning point; while Man-su was still clumsy, this killing was nowhere near as chaotic as the first, and marked Man-su’s growing comfort with murder as a means of gaining employment.
The final killing is the most brutal, as Man-su sees that he actually does have other choices; at one point, he tries getting Seon-chul to recommend him as a second manager rather than killing him and taking his place. However, Man-su is now too far in, remarking that stopping here would make the deaths of the first two meaningless. This, however, is a poor rationalization for the third killing; the Man-su shown at the start of the film would have trusted his fellow paper man’s promise of a recommendation and immediately dropped the idea of murder. The new Man-su, however, has been turned into a monster by the competitive nature of capitalism, and he no longer trusts his fellow workers, seeing Seon-chul’s death as the only surefire way of getting a job. The loss of Man-su’s morality is terrifyingly captured by this ability to crudely rationalize murder as ‘necessary’ despite the true motive being self-interest. The inhuman way Man-su kills Seon-chul (wrapping him in plastic, burying him, and then choking him on his own vomit) completes this characterization of Man-su as a much crueler man than the version shown at the start.
The conclusion of the film is when Man-su’s murders finally make him the most qualified candidate by a literal ‘process of elimination.’ It’s frightening to see how much Man-su has changed by this point. I was especially moved by the following exchange between Man-su and his new employers at Moon Paper.
Man-su: When you say fully automated, the workers… will have to be reduced, right?
Moon Paper: That’s the whole point of the system. No other choice. Do you have any objection? If you don’t like it, you can say no.
Man-su: Not at all. How can you go against the times? But at any rate, you need one person to watch over it all, right?
At the beginning of the film, Man-su risks his own career to campaign against Solar Paper’s mass layoffs. At the end, however, he sees mass layoffs as another situation in which there is ‘no other choice,’ and he crudely rationalizes this cruelty with the argument of “how can you go against the times?” The things that originally made Man-su’s character endearing have all disappeared; the coldness of the capitalist system has turned Man-su into a killer, who sees the corporate layoffs in the same way he views his murders – “no other choice.” Rather than question the inhumanity of the system governing his life, he allows it to completely transform him into this perverse idea of the ‘perfect employee’: subservient to his bosses, ready to do anything to be ‘King Rat’ in the capitalist world, unquestioning of the cruelty he lives in and actively aids.
This steady progression of Man-su’s character builds a powerful portrayal of how capitalism has built a dog-eat-dog world in which good-hearted men turn cruel, in hopes of beating their co-sufferers in the giant rat race that we call the job market. The film goes beyond describing the system as cruel, however, and also highlights the pointlessness of it. “No Other Choice” brilliantly portrays how even the putative winners in the capitalist system are not truly happy.
The pointlessness of this rat race is conveyed through the final scenes of the film. Man-su gets his dogs back, making his daughter happy enough to begin playing the cello for her family again. However, this beautiful, human moment of family connection is lost on Man-su; he’s stuck in a traffic jam, on his way to the job he killed three people to get. The viewer is left wondering what kind of amazing work experience might be worth such a path of violence – turns out, three people’s lives weren’t worth too much for Man-su. The new paper factory is fully automated, leaving Man-su to mindlessly watch over a bunch of machines, completely alone in a massive factory where humans are no longer needed except for “one person to watch over it all.” All the things he mentioned loving about his work– drinks with colleagues, the feeling of touching paper, the sense of accomplishment– have been erased by the power of automation. Man-su is given a pyrrhic victory where he doesn’t really even win, becoming “King of Turd Island” where he gets a salary but is deprived of all the human aspects that made his job fun. To my mind, the worst part of Man-su’s transformation isn’t even the readiness to kill, but rather the fact that he sees this outcome as a victory. The old Man-su would’ve hated this new paper factory, but this transformed version sees the soulless factory as a good reason for having killed three people.
The satisfaction of his work life has vanished, but his family life is also different now. His wife is colder towards him now, accepting the murders to keep their family together but no longer able to see Man-su as the same man. She counts down when they hug and no longer presents the same warmth towards him. The loss of Man-su’s humanity has driven a wedge between him and his family – he’s no longer the same man they loved at the movie’s start. While the family stays together, there’s now more emotional distance.
The representation of these complex themes is aided by Park Chan-wook’s talent for symbolism and motifs. I’m terrible at this kind of analysis, but I think I did pick up on a few intentionally placed motifs. Man-su is plagued by a toothache throughout the movie, particularly flaring up when he’s plotting his murders, and he finally removes this troublesome tooth when he gets drunk to prepare himself for the final murder. This rotten tooth is symbolic of Man-su’s corrupted morality; it troubles him throughout the film as he executes the murders, but when he finally drowns what’s left of his moral compass in alcohol, this rotting morality is violently removed with a pair of pliers. The rotting tooth is a powerful symbol of Man-su’s moral decay and how he eventually resorted to violently ripping out what was left of his moral compass in order to continue his quest to be ‘King Rat’ in the capitalist world.
Also interesting is the symbolism of Man-su’s love for plants. He dedicates himself to caring for plants in his greenhouse at the start of the film, but he slowly stops using the greenhouse for gardening and converts it into a place to plot murders. After failing a job interview, he vented his frustration on a bonsai tree he used to love, cruelly breaking its branches with thick wires; his love has been replaced by violence and anger. This motif is continued when Man-su tries killing Seon-chul by dropping a potted plant on his head – again, his love for plants is transformed into a drive to kill. I speculate that the plants in this film are yet another symbol of Man-su’s original kindness, slowly being replaced with cruelty as Man-su loses his moral grounding. This interpretation is further supported by Man-su hiding a dead body by planting an apple tree over it; a superficial kindness now conceals a dark and violent soul.
Subtle details in the film tie together to enhance Park Chan-wook’s critique of capitalism and the culture it has created. When Man-su is planning the first murder, he sadly notices that Beom-mo’s pear tree is being eaten by bugs; at the end of the film, Man-su’s apple tree is just as neglected and being eaten by bugs, and his daughter Ri-one is the only person who notices it. Ri-one symbolizes the goodness and morality of children, their humanity still uncorrupted by the ravages of capitalism and the dog-eat-dog world; just as her cello music is the only human thing left at the end of the film, so too is she the only one to notice the apple tree’s plight.
This motif is taken even further during the credits where automated deforestation takes place in the service of the paper factories. It’s a contradiction of enormous proportions for Man-su, a plant lover, to work in a paper factory whose entire existence relies on the destruction of forests. Man-su’s ability to ignore this contradiction reflects how he, and everyone else living in the capitalist world, is forced to turn off certain parts of their morality in order to cope with the violence of the system they serve. If you pay too much attention to the contradictions within the system and the cruelty of it, the realization would destroy you.
Ri-one’s character is also interesting; almost all her lines are mimicry of the adults and the harshest things they’ve said or done. She is a foil to the adults’ inhumanity, representing the innate goodness of children before their corruption by the dog-eat-dog world’s pressure. Ri-one parrots her mother’s angry outbursts to Man-su, giving a look into their collapsing marriage, and throughout the movie also repeats her parents’ heartbreaking announcement that the dogs will be sent away, “in these circumstances, we can’t afford to feed so many mouths.” Ri-one’s character offers a look into the chaos and violence of the adults’ lives but contrasts it with her own innocence and goodness; her cello music at the end of the film is the only positive aspect of the scene Man-su has created, standing in stark contrast to his Kafkaesque shuffling between the traffic jam and the automated factory. As noted before, she was also the only person in the family to notice the bugs eating Man-su’s apple tree, marking how she still retains the humanity that Man-su has lost.
The cello music itself reveals another contrast between Ri-one and her parents. While Ri-one loves the music for its beauty, her parents view it in a utilitarian manner, repeatedly remarking how “without music she’ll never be independent.” While her parents also appreciate the music’s beauty at some level, this human motive is subsumed by their desire for Ri-one to be successful within the capitalist world.
These many contrasts between Ri-one and her parents highlight the way that the adults have been transformed by their experience living under capitalism. They no longer have the innocence to spend their whole day appreciating the beauty of music; financial hardship and the pressure of the dog-eat-dog world force Man-su and his wife Mi-ri to always be thinking about how music can help their daughter succeed in this nightmarish system. Ri-one’s kindness toward the tree and her gentle nature reflect what Man-su used to be before desperation drove him to bury his conscience. The writing of this character contributes significantly to Park Chan-wook’s critique of capitalism and how it drives people to lose the kindness and innocence that children are born with.
This idea of innocence being robbed by societal pressure is expanded upon throughout the movie. When Man-su goes to kill Beom-mo, the long comedic sequence has a flashback that shows Beom-mo and his wife A-ra when they were young and first fell in love. These are completely different people from the sad couple shown in the present day; they were young, excited by their work, and in love with each other. In the present day where Man-su is about to kill Beom-mo, Beom-mo has turned into an alcoholic after being laid off, A-ra is cheating on him, and both have lost whatever idealism and romance once brought them together, ultimately culminating in A-ra shooting Beom-mo in a fit of rage over the disappointment of their marriage. The flashback highlights this contrast and shows how Korean capitalism extinguishes the flame of idealism and romance that exists within young people; in Beom-mo’s life, hope and love are destroyed by layoffs and the devastation that follows them.
The central theme of this movie, ‘no other choice,’ also offers an interesting perspective on how capitalism is shaping South Korean culture. Man-su repeatedly justifies his cruelty by claiming he has ‘no other choice,’ but the very title of the movie drives viewers to question whether that is true. There’s a cognitive dissonance between Man-su’s justification of his actions and the actual multitude of ‘choices’ he has to rescue himself without resorting to murder. His wife suggested selling the house and moving to a small apartment to cut costs, but he is appalled by this proposition. Every cost-cutting maneuver is felt by Man-su’s family as a punishment; when listing in order of importance the sacrifices he’s made because of unemployment, Man-su sees Netflix coming right after putting up their house for sale
Listen, please. My wife is doing part time work, we put our home up for sale, canceled Netflix…
What?
Attachment to one’s ancestral home is human, but Man-su and his family also exhibit an attachment to luxuries like Netflix, tennis lessons, $50,000 cellos, and fancy cars. The loss of these luxuries corresponds to a loss of social status for Man-su; he feels like less of a man because he can not afford these things, and in his mind, this creates a heightened sense of catastrophe and desperation. While in therapy for unemployed people, Man-su chants “I’m a man, I’m a good person” as if he needs help believing it. Korean capitalism has turned fancy cars and big homes into status symbols that determine how much of a man someone is; Man-su’s unemployment doesn’t just worsen his material condition but also constitutes a kind of emasculation for him, creating a sense of desperation that wouldn’t otherwise exist.
This sense of emasculation is exacerbated by the fact his wife is now the primary earner in the family. This is frequently a cause of embarrassment for men with a macho complex, and it’s shown throughout the movie that Man-su resents this reversal of roles. He shows hostility towards Mi-ri’s boss, suspecting him of trying to seduce Mi-ri, and seeks any excuse available to think poorly of his wife’s job. When his car stalls in front of Mi-ri’s boss, he grumbles under his breath about how embarrassing it is. While psychoanalysis is always a sketchy field, there’s reasonable evidence to think that Mi-ri becoming the primary bread-winner added to Man-su’s sense of emasculation.
Another factor contributing to Man-su’s sense of being less ‘manly’ is that Man-su can only find part-time, degrading work. When working in the grocery store, after finishing his shift, his work clothes are taken away, leaving him in only his underwear, a stark contrast to the dignified uniform he always wore at Solar Paper; the loss of his cushy job forced Man-su to take up work that treated him with less dignity and made him feel even less like a man. In this scene where Man-su is left in his underwear, he trudges off to change with a gait that indicates a sense of humiliation and shame. Man-su’s obsession with needing to confirm “I’m a man, I’m a good person” reflects how his desperation didn’t result so much from material circumstances as it did from a sense of emasculation and personal failure, driven by absurd societal standards and an unhealthy conception of masculinity. Unemployed people don’t naturally tend to start murdering people; Man-su is driven by a deeper problem of feeling that he is less of a man because of his unemployment and loss of social status.
“No Other Choice” is also effective at highlighting the issue of dog-eat-dog culture. As I discussed earlier in this post, Man-su gradually transitioned from seeing other paper men as comrades, to seeing them as obstacles to securing employment in a competitive job market, providing an effective critique of dog-eat-dog culture. However, the film also portrays this issue by highlighting the similarities between Man-su and his victims; Man-su has an especially difficult time killing them because they’re people he would ordinarily have regarded as fellow paper men, and as he carries out the murders, he is painfully aware of all the things he has in common with his victims. When killing Beom-mo, he bonds with him over their shared love for paper and their common struggle with unemployment, highlighting the cruelty of a system that pushes people who would ordinarily be friends to instead fight against each other. In Man-su and Beom-mo’s dramatic confrontation, Man-su exasperatedly asks Beom-mo why he didn’t listen to his wife and sell their home or seek work outside of the paper industry – ironically, Man-su received the same suggestions from his wife and ignored them as well, with the same motives as Beom-mo. The similarities between Man-su and Beom-mo make it obvious the two would’ve been friends if not for the dog-eat-dog nature of capitalism and the cruelty to which it drove Man-su, and this tragedy highlights a systemic issue of the capitalist system as it exists today.
Similar scenes take place when Man-su goes to kill Si-jo and Seon-chul. He briefly bonds with Si-jo, literally calling him an “unemployed comrade” and connecting again over their shared struggle, only to use this connection and the corresponding trust as a way to deceive Si-jo and eliminate him – just another tragic consequence of the dog-eat-dog world and the drive to out-compete one’s own friends. All of Man-su’s victims are people he would’ve ordinarily been good friends with; it is only because of dog-eat-dog capitalism that Man-su is forced to treat these people as his enemies and ruthlessly kill them. The highlighting of similarities between Man-su and his victims is a clever way Park Chan-wook criticizes the culture surrounding capitalism, a culture that divides people who would otherwise be driven to unite around common psychographics and a shared struggle.
“No Other Choice” also does a great job of highlighting the insanity of workers showing love and respect towards companies that barely see them as people. The most extreme example is Beom-mo, who shows a hilarious attachment to the paper industry; he doesn’t just thank it for the money he earns but rather credits it with the existence of money itself. Beom-mo has become so obsessed with the paper industry that he sees it as his very identity and believes it truly is the most important thing in the world.
Beom-mo: Paper has fed me for 25 years, honey. It’s how I’m meant to be, I’ve no other choice. You’ve been fed by the money I earned from paper, too. That money was printed on paper I made, and the cigarette filter you smoke is paper, too. If we don’t use paper, who will?
A-ra: What?
This attachment to the paper industry seems ridiculous in light of the brusque way Beom-mo was laid off, and this is precisely what “No Other Choice” tries to highlight. All of these ‘paper men’ have lives that revolve around their employers and how amazing they are, to the point that the very word ‘man’ becomes hyphenated to ‘paper,’ yet their employers barely view them as human beings. This film reflects a global issue of how our work defines our very identity, and how we are expected to love and respect our employers without expecting even a fraction of that respect from the employers themselves.
Finally, I’d like to consider how the title “No Other Choice” sets up the core theme of the movie: how cruelty is rationalized under capitalism with this idea of there being ‘no other choice’, even when there is. Man-su slowly becomes just like his cruel employers at Solar Paper with his use of the ‘no other choice’ line. The employers have a choice to sacrifice some of their profits to show a bit more kindness towards their workers, but since the nature of capitalism disincentivizes such basic humanity, they tell themselves there’s ‘no other choice’ when there is. Man-su had a choice to try cutting back on expenses or seeking a less cushy job, rather than killing people; but again, the desperation of unemployment drives Man-su to justify murder by saying he had ‘no other choice.’ The justification of ‘no other choice’ reflects the drive to turn off one’s brain and ignore the cruelty of capitalism, choosing the easy route of becoming part of the problem rather than taking up the insurmountable task of fighting against it. There are always other choices than cruelty, but saying ‘no other choice’ makes one’s own life easier at the expense of others; in this film, that idea is portrayed as the driving force of Korean capitalism and its brutality.
The movie’s ending depicts an apocalyptic vision of Korean capitalism. Men’s morality is destroyed by the need to compete for jobs, while jobs themselves turn into loneliness and monotony, providing little satisfaction beyond a paycheck; the economy is driven partly by these amoral worker bees, but mostly by automation that removes the human and personal quality of production. Production is contingent on cruelty towards people as well as cruelty towards the planet itself, with a terrifying scene of mechanized deforestation playing out in the final minutes of the film. This is the true face of today’s capitalism.
I could go on talking about this film for a lot longer. This post mainly focused on analysis, since that provides more scope for content than just fangirling over Park Chan-wook (which I spend a lot of time doing outside my blog), but I also want to appreciate the brilliant execution of this film. The movie had an incredible soundtrack, and I’m now addicted to Red Dragonfly, the song that was playing during the first killing; all of the songs fit well with the moment in the movie at which they were playing, really adding to the experience. The cinematography and editing were beautiful, and I’m especially fond of some of the shots that faded into other shots. The movie did a great job showing the cruelty of mass layoffs; it acknowledges that unemployment is more than just having to look for another job, but that it also leads to a loss of confidence, family trouble, and utter desperation as month after month can go by without new employment being found – as the movie said, ‘to be fired is to be axed.’ The acting was superb, and the script was brilliant – hats off to whoever spent this long coming up with paper jokes, I was laughing for a great part of the movie. Out of sheer admiration for the creativity, here’s another paper joke:
I’m like one of your precious paper machines. Neglect me, and I’ll break! Hurry up and smother me in that lube oil! Or I’ll rip you to pieces, like tracing paper!
The entire movie was brilliant, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Park Chan-wook has created a nightmarish vision of Korean capitalism, one which will be haunting my dreams for many years to come.