1

Music of Chan Wook Park’s Oldboy
-The art of scoring against the drama-

Culminating Experience Thesis Paper
of

Master of Music degree in SFTV department
at

Berklee College of Music
by

AVI MEDINA

2014

2

Appendix:

1- Introduction
- New Age Korean Cinema
- Differences with the Manga
- Revenge Theme
- Style of the Director - Influences
2- About the Score
- Style of Music
- Use of Waltz
- Themes
- Contradictive style
- Evolution of Music as the film evolves into different genres
- Instrumentation (choice of using both real strings and synths)
3- Cue by Cue Analysis
- 4 chapters
The imprisonment
The chase
The Past
The Revenge

3

1- Introduction
Chan Wook Park’ 2003 film Oldboy is considered as the biggest and most successful example of
South Korean New Age Cinema. It is the second of his ‘Revenge’ Trilogy, sequel to ‘Sympathy
for Mr. Vengeance’ and prequel to ‘Sympathy for Lady Vengeance’. However the 3 films has
not much in common in terms of story and characters except for the main theme of revenge,
which is, according to global data , covers %75 of the films produced in the world as the subject
in one form or another. Well, this is no big surprise really. As sputnik music stated in their
review of the movie, ‘From the dawn of time, man had this primordial tendency to bring all
kinds of evil to his fellow humans, so the anticipated reaction for the victims was to get back at
them, while being equally or more inventive in the very planning and realization of their
reprisal. This abundance in forms that evil and revenge can acquire has motivated contemporary
script writers to write inventively about revenge, adding multiple twists in the initial (simple)
pattern.’ (1) We wouldn’t be just if we say the phenomena started with the movies however,
many of the Greek literature like Homer and Sophocles has used the revenge subject in their
stories. In ancient Greek theater plays was that the element of revenge was aptly combined with
the inherent weakness of man to escape the destiny that the gods had given him (2) (Το
πεπρωµενο φυγείν αδύνατον). However in contemporary Hollywood and non-Hollywood films
the revenge subject is generally used in a secular level, there are certain films which fully
encompass the point of view of the ancient Greek poets and theatrical directors.
Chan Wook Park, who’s known for technical superiority and beautiful storytelling style
approached Oldboy as the one that came closer to the characteristics for which ancient Greek
tragedies were critically acclaimed worldwide and the film score that was written for the film
plays a huge part in that respect.

4

If we need to talk about a genre for Oldboy we can easily say Neo-Noir. Chan wook park uses a
lot of elements from the classic film-noir genre in Oldboy. The first one come to mind are the
character design. A man who is drawn into a situation he has no control of and try to prove his
innocence and some beautiful girl who’s helping the protagonist whose relationship with the man
is vague to say the least. A textbook femme fatale. The scenery is another example to the genre.
The city is presented as a puzzle that waiting to be solved. Oh Dae-Su, who spent 15 years in a
room that has no connection with the outside world, has to figure out and adapt to the new
environment (‘the bigger prison’ as mentioned in the movie) along with the mystery of his
revenge quest. Another feat that adds Oldboy both a political content and strength to his roots as
a film noir are the things that the movie says about memory. The story focuses on the role of the
TV over Dae-Su’s prisonment for 15 years and how he’s shaped culturally like a puppet with the
continuous and strong interaction with the media collective memory on the TV. It's not just
geographical borders that are shakier. Korean movies blithely flout Hollywood's carefully
policed genre rules. As a result, they end up with labels like "kimchi western" (The Good, The
Bad, The Weird), "eco-kidnap serial-killer alien-invasion thriller" (Save The Green Planet!) or
"man who has a gun inserted into his penis and becomes aroused at the sight of ballerinas and
has a brother who's half-tiger drama" (Ebert,2005)
The movie’s composer is Jo Yeong-Wook, who’s originally a music editor and supervisor in
South Korea. Oldboy was the first movie that he worked with Chan Wook Park and as a
composer. With Oldboy’s success by the critics and especially critically acclaimed music let the
2 work together in many other Chan Wook Park films to come such as ‘Sympathy for Lady
Vengeance’ and ‘I’m a cyborg.. but that’s ok’.

5

Jo Yeong-Wook’s music in Chan wook Park movies has always been similar in terms of style.
Generally the music creates an atmosphere almost like a fairy tale, which sometimes creates a
very distinct contrast with the vulgar nature of the film. This contrast serves the characteristics of
Chan Wook Park’s writing style as the film itself is fed through such contrasts and shifts in the
terms of viewer comprehension of the characters and plot.
Yeong-Wook is also very versatile in terms of technique. As we can see in Oldboy soundtrack,
there are several Orchestral tracks, several tracks with synth strings and several tracks with a full
on digital electronic music. The one thing that’s he’s really stable is the usage of 6 / 8 meters and
waltzes in his scores. His compositions and orchestrations are generally very classical, and
simple but they’re definitely not shy and are playing an important role on the plot’s progress.
It’s not hard to notice that the budget for music in the movie wasn’t all that big, however the
score is a great example that a great and divine soundtrack is not about the money spent but the
integrity of the work of the composer. Composer Yeong-wook Jo used a full string orchestra and
discrete electronic sounds to give out the different drama stages of the film, and sometimes
combined the two to crate a new layer of sound vision as he’s trying to fit in the budget. To give
a precise sonic analogue of the emotional and physical transformations of all film characters. As
‘Voivod’ from sputnik music puts it nicely, the main character of the film, Oh Dae-Su, struggles
in vain to get out of each dead-end both in his mind and body, the strings weave bleak melodies
that seem to follow a downward spiral staircase, so as to eventually be lost to the darkness, in
which a worn mind resides after 15 years of mental and physical captivity. During the hyperviolent scenes of the film, the music is either strings endorsing romantic waltzes or low-beat
psychedelic electronica, providing a superb controversy. As all characters – captor, pawns and
the protagonist – pretentiously think they have control over their mind, their lives and the lives of

6

others, strings, synths and piano stand behind the interrogator’s light, gradually revealing to all
that their proclaimed control over situations and people is in multiples of fading grey. Some
string themes are repeated throughout the film/soundtrack, only to remind that what was thought
as true is false and that the escape for all parties is not in bright colors. As the inevitable end is
closing in, the tension in the arrangements and the nature of the melodies of the strings increases
proportionally and eventually wears off to calm waltzes. Catharsis has been served.
In this paper i will try to emphasize the unique path that the composer chose to handle this
incredibly hard script to tackle, by composing not for what the audience actually see, but
something deeper, something more psychological, and the methods he uses to achieve this task in
hand while sounding as perfectionist as Chan Wook Park wants and shoots his pictures like a
painting, and to emphasise the change and the progress of the movie’s evolution in terms of
genre and density in arguing themes and taboos in human philosophy.

Oh Dae-su’s Character and Differences with the Manga
The Movie Oldboy is based on the Japanese manga ‘Oldboy’ written by Garon Tsuchiya,
illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi, and serialized from 1996 to 1998. However there are several
changes and alterations done by Chan Wook Park in the movie.

‘The protagonist of the Manga is Shinji Goto, who’s been kept in a private prison on a
secret floor of a skyscraper for some ten years. Not only does he not know who put him
there or why, but he also suffers from amnesia. After being abruptly released in the
manga’s first (of 79) chapters, he doesn’t focus on revenge or even learning the truth
behind what’s been done to him; instead, he meets a young and virginal girl named Eri
and tries to start a normal life, despite surveillance from the man responsible for his
imprisonment: his high-school classmate, Takaaki Kakinuma. True, Kakinuma is

7

motivated by revenge, having been traumatized by the protagonist in a classroom
incident. But the villain’s schemes, while they create an atmosphere of paranoia, don’t
succeed in breaking Shinichi Gotō. In fact, this protagonist remains rather stoic
throughout the whole story, even in flashbacks to his time in prison. When he pursues
those who incarcerated him, he seems to do so more out of curiosity than revenge, all
while retaining the same stoic demeanor.’ (Darius, 2013)
In contrast, the protagonist of the 2003 film — which transfers the action to South Korea and
renames characters appropriately — is a drunk man who we meet at a police station with
handcuffs, cursing around and making a scene. We can tell that he’s a troublemaker all his life,
who doesn’t care about what’s going on around him, let alone like a person to dedicate all his life
for a cause. However when his friend gets him out of the jail, we can see despite all his negative
sides, he’s a caring father. It’s a very important characteristics of him which will mean a lot to
the plot.

THE PRISONMENT
His 15 years in jail is shown to us in a montage like manner, emphasizing on some very crucial
details like his training, the delicate state of his mental situation and the idea of a prison building
that locks up people and torments them with the silent treatment. We are also introduced to a
very important actor in the movie during this silent treatment. The melody that comes up before
they give gas to make the prisoners go to sleep in a specified time. That tune will possess an
enormous role throughout the film during his search and towards the end. This is an excellent use
of a leitmotif in a movie that also acts as source music.
Towards the end of his jail time, the movie shows us the passing time in a very clever montage
scene where we see Oh-dae Su carving up the wall towards his freedom (which will end up in
failure, another reference to his lack of having a say in his life, even when he -and the audience

8

as well- thinks he actually has- on one half of the screen and all major South Korean and Global
events on the other.
The soundtrack that accompanies this scene is ‘The Jailhouse Rock’, an electronic piece from the
score.
This scene concludes the first chapter of the movie, the prison. Oh Dae Su would now have to
find a way to adapt to the new environment, the big prison now. That’s the first time we hear an
adaptation of Oh Dae Su’s theme in 42. minute in the fight scene. The cue ‘In a lonely place’ is a
serene version of the main theme of the protagonist ‘The Old Boy’. The evolution in the theme
music for the main character is also a great example how the score evolves in harmony with the
movie’s plot. The scene that this cue has been used is also important because it gives away a
very important scoring technique that’s been used throughout the film. Although it’s a very
fierce and dramatic fighting scene with lots of actions especially when his last 15 years is
considered, the music itself is lacking all kinds of action, it represents the serenity and the relief
inside Oh Dae Su’s head, now that he’s a free man. This technique is used in the number of the
collaborations between Chan Wook Park and Yeong Jeong-Wo. There will be even more
dramatic uses of this technique in the later parts of the film.

The scene in Mido’s apartment is another very important one in terms of music. Not only
because we hear the reduced version of Mido’s theme for the first time. - This also gives out the
pattern in the film where everyone’s personal themes are introduced as a reduced or altered way

9

and they change and evolve continuously as we progress through the movie, reaching it’s final
form towards the end, when our perspective of the characters are fully developed and reached its
final destination. This is particularly important in a film like Oldboy where the opinion for a
character by the audience would change a lot during the course of the film. The scene in the
subway is one of the first impressions of the movie’s transmission into a drama that has some
magical realist elements and it’s one of the hints for the audience to expect more from the plot
than a generic action flick from this film and there’s a big chunk of psychological and
philosophical drama coming up.

THE CHASE
After Oh Dae Su meets Mido the second chapter of the movie fully settles in. Where the
protagonist and his lovely companion tries to solve the mystery behind the man that prisoned Oh
Dae Su for 15 years. During this chapter, mainly in his occasional meetings with the ‘bad
character’ of the movie we start to see that our protagonist is not the perfect hero that would have
been expected from the movie’s Hollywood equivalent, in contrary he has several dysfunctional
traits that slowly draws him away from the altar that the audience put him in the first chapter.
However the bad guy would remain mysterious until the late 2nd and final part of the movie.
Music also contributes a lot to the changes in the movie. As mentioned before, the character
themes used in that part of the movie, although harmonically the same is a lot more aggressive
and increased in complexity as the characters do the same. For example he track ‘Oldboy’ is the
evolved version of the ‘A lonely place’ which was in the first part of the movie. This part of the
movie also has the only outsourced music of the soundtrack, a very fast and agitated version of

10

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Winter , an excellent performance by Kyung Wha Chung and the St
Luke's Chamber Ensemble.
The second part of the movie starts with Mido and Oh Dae Su searching for the prison that he
lived for 15 years. The soundtrack ‘Searches’ accompanies a very delicate and beautiful montage
of tasting food and running around the city. The contradictions are there again. Although the
picture has some light and even comical elements, ‘The searchers’ is a very sad and depressing
tune, we can easily say that the aim was to put a mirror to Oh Dae Su’s inner thoughts rather then
actual events with the music. This is another very oftenly used technique in Chan Wook Park
films, especially the ones that he did with composer Jo Yeong-wook. There are numerous
examples for that technique which will be discussed later in Oldboy as well. When they finally
find the jail and Oh Dae Su goes there to check the place, we see another very cool trick from the
composer, the score suddenly becomes the source music as coming from the stereo in Mido’s
apartment and gets out of the movie in a very elegant and subtle way.
His scenes in prison after that contains some of the most intense scenes in the movie.
First the infamous pulling teeth and then the one-shot fighting scene. Both are genious
both in terms of how they’re shot and the use of music. The teeth pulling scene was the
scene that the critics were talked about the most because of its intense moments of using
a hammer to pull teeth and the way they’re shot in a very macro level. However all those
critics and accusations of being too vulgar is just what Chan Wook Park desired for that
scene. First of all there’s no actual footage of teeth being pulled out. It’s just the idea of
it. Exactly like how Oh Dae Su proved in the second teeth pulling scene in the movie,
where he was the target of the hammer this time. It’s always inside your head,
imagination is ten times worse than the real thing. The choice of music in both teeth
pulling sequences is very peculiar too. Chan Wook Park deliberately wanted to have
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Winter 1st movement for that scene. This clearly represents his
method of using classic music underscoring very vulgar or fiery scenes as a contractive
point. Four Seasons has also another purpose as all 3 movies of his revenge Trilogy has
a movement from the same magnum opus from Vivaldi so we can say it’s one of the few
thing that ties the trilogy together along with the idea of revenge. A classical listener can
easily tell that this version of Winter 1st mvmt, which was recorded for this movie by
Kyung Wha Chung and the St Luke's Chamber Ensemble is a lot faster and dynamically

11

sharp and fierce than the original. This is probably a decision to make it even more
dramatic and raise the tension level in a scene that basically runs in viewers minds.
.

1- Introduction
Chan Wook Park’ 2003 film Oldboy is considered as the biggest and most successful example of
South Korean New Age Cinema. It is the second of his ‘Revenge’ Trilogy, sequel to ‘Sympathy
for Mr. Vengeance’ and prequel to ‘Sympathy for Lady Vengeance’. However the 3 films has
not much in common in terms of story and characters except for the main theme of revenge,
which is, according to global data, covers %75 of the films produced in the world as the subject
in one form or another. Well, this is no big surprise really. As sputnik music stated in their
review of the movie, ‘From the dawn of time, man had this primordial tendency to bring all
kinds of evil to his fellow humans, so the anticipated reaction for the victims was to get back at
them, while being equally or more inventive in the very planning and realization of their
reprisal. This abundance in forms that evil and revenge can acquire has motivated contemporary
script writers to write inventively about revenge, adding multiple twists in the initial (simple)
pattern.’ (1) We wouldn’t be just if we say the phenomena started with the movies however,

12

many of the Greek literature like Homer and Sophocles has used the revenge subject in their
stories. In ancient Greek theater plays was that the element of revenge was aptly combined with
the inherent weakness of man to escape the destiny that the gods had given him (2) (Το
πεπρωµενο φυγείν αδύνατον). However in contemporary Hollywood and non-Hollywood films
the revenge subject is generally used in a secular level, there are certain films, which fully
encompass the point of view of the ancient Greek poets and theatrical directors.
Chan Wook Park, who’s known for technical superiority and beautiful storytelling style
approached Oldboy as the one that came closer to the characteristics for which ancient Greek
tragedies were critically acclaimed worldwide and the film score that was written for the film
plays a huge part in that respect.
If we need to talk about a genre for Oldboy we can easily say Neo-Noir. Chan wook park uses a
lot of elements from the classic film-noir genre in Oldboy. The first one come to mind are the
character design. A man who is drawn into a situation he has no control of and try to prove his
innocence and some beautiful girl who’s helping the protagonist whose relationship with the man
is vague to say the least. A textbook femme fatale. The scenery is another example to the genre.
The city is presented as a puzzle that waiting to be solved. Oh Dae-Su, who spent 15 years in a
room that has no connection with the outside world, has to figure out and adapt to the new
environment (‘the bigger prison’ as mentioned in the movie) along with the mystery of his
revenge quest. Another feat that adds Oldboy both a political content and strength to his roots as
a film noir are the things that the movie says about memory. The story focuses on the role of the
TV over Dae-Su’s prisonment for 15 years and how he’s shaped culturally like a puppet with the
continuous and strong interaction with the media collective memory on the TV. It's not just
geographical borders that are shakier. Korean movies blithely flout Hollywood's carefully

13

policed genre rules. As a result, they end up with labels like "kimchi western" (The Good, The
Bad, The Weird), "eco-kidnap serial-killer alien-invasion thriller" (Save The Green Planet!) or
"man who has a gun inserted into his penis and becomes aroused at the sight of ballerinas and
has a brother who's half-tiger drama" (Ebert,2005)
The movie’s composer is Jo Yeong-Wook, who’s originally a music editor and supervisor in
South Korea. Oldboy was the first movie that he worked with Chan Wook Park and as a
composer. With Oldboy’s success by the critics and especially critically acclaimed music let the
2 work together in many other Chan Wook Park films to come such as ‘Sympathy for Lady
Vengeance’ and ‘I’m a cyborg.. but that’s ok’.
Jo Yeong-Wook’s music in Chan wook Park movies has always been similar in terms of style.
Generally the music creates an atmosphere almost like a fairy tale, which sometimes creates a
very distinct contrast with the vulgar nature of the film. This contrast serves the characteristics of
Chan Wook Park’s writing style as the film itself is fed through such contrasts and shifts in the
terms of viewer comprehension of the characters and plot.
Yeong-Wook is also very versatile in terms of technique. As we can see in Oldboy soundtrack,
there are several orchestral tracks, several tracks with synth strings and several tracks with a full
on digital electronic music. The one thing that’s he’s really stable is the usage of 6 / 8 meters and
waltzes in his scores. His compositions and orchestrations are generally very classical, and
simple but they’re definitely not shy and are playing an important role on the plot’s progress.
It’s not hard to notice that the budget for music in the movie wasn’t all that big, however the
score is a great example that a great and divine soundtrack is not about the money spent but the
integrity of the work of the composer. Composer Yeong-wook Jo used a full string orchestra and
discrete electronic sounds to give out the different drama stages of the film, and sometimes

14

combined the two to crate a new layer of sound vision as he’s trying to fit in the budget. To give
a precise sonic analogue of the emotional and physical transformations of all film characters. As
‘Voivod’ from sputnik music puts it nicely, the main character of the film, Oh Dae-Su, struggles
in vain to get out of each dead-end both in his mind and body, the strings weave bleak melodies
that seem to follow a downward spiral staircase, so as to eventually be lost to the darkness, in
which a worn mind resides after 15 years of mental and physical captivity. During the hyperviolent scenes of the film, the music is either strings endorsing romantic waltzes or low-beat
psychedelic electronica, providing a superb controversy. As all characters – captor, pawns and
the protagonist – pretentiously think they have control over their mind, their lives and the lives of
others, strings, synths and piano stand behind the interrogator’s light, gradually revealing to all
that their proclaimed control over situations and people is in multiples of fading grey. Some
string themes are repeated throughout the film/soundtrack, only to remind that what was thought
as true is false and that the escape for all parties is not in bright colors. As the inevitable end is
closing in, the tension in the arrangements and the nature of the melodies of the strings increases
proportionally and eventually wears off to calm waltzes. Catharsis has been served.
In this paper i will try to emphasize the unique path that the composer chose to handle this
incredibly hard script to tackle, by composing not for what the audience actually see, but
something deeper, something more psychological, and the methods he uses to achieve this task in
hand while sounding as perfectionist as Chan Wook Park wants and shoots his pictures like a
painting, and to emphasize the change and the progress of the movie’s evolution in terms of
genre and density in arguing themes and taboos in human philosophy.

15

Oh Dae-su’s Character and Differences with the Manga
The Movie Oldboy is based on the Japanese manga ‘Oldboy’ written by Garon Tsuchiya,
illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi, and serialized from 1996 to 1998. However there are several
changes and alterations done by Chan Wook Park in the movie.

‘The protagonist of the Manga is Shinji Goto, who’s been kept in a private prison on a
secret floor of a skyscraper for some ten years. Not only does he not know who put him
there or why, but he also suffers from amnesia. After being abruptly released in the
manga’s first (of 79) chapters, he doesn’t focus on revenge or even learning the truth
behind what’s been done to him; instead, he meets a young and virginal girl named Eri
and tries to start a normal life, despite surveillance from the man responsible for his
imprisonment: his high-school classmate, Takaaki Kakinuma. True, Kakinuma is
motivated by revenge, having been traumatized by the protagonist in a classroom
incident. But the villain’s schemes, while they create an atmosphere of paranoia, don’t
succeed in breaking Shinichi Gotō. In fact, this protagonist remains rather stoic
throughout the whole story, even in flashbacks to his time in prison. When he pursues
those who incarcerated him, he seems to do so more out of curiosity than revenge, all
while retaining the same stoic demeanor.’ (Darius, 2013)
In contrast, the protagonist of the 2003 film — which transfers the action to South Korea and
renames characters appropriately — is a drunken man who we meet at a police station with
handcuffs, cursing around and making a scene. We can tell that he’s a troublemaker all his life,
who doesn’t care about what’s going on around him, let alone like a person to dedicate all his life
for a cause. However when his friend gets him out of the jail, we can see despite all his negative
sides, he’s a caring father. It’s a very important characteristic of him which will mean a lot to the
plot.

THE PRISONMENT

16

His 15 years in jail is shown to us in a montage like manner, emphasising on some very crucial
details like his training, the delicate state of his mental situation and the idea of a prison building
that locks up people and torments them with the silent treatment. We are also introduced to a
very important actor in the movie during this silent treatment. The melody that comes up before
they give gas to make the prisoners go to sleep in a specified time. That tune will posess an
enormous role throughout the film during his search and towards the end. This is an excellent use
of a leitmotif in a movie which also acts as a source music.
Towards the end of his jail time, the movie shows us the passing time in a very clever montage
scene where we see Oh-dae Su carving up the wall towards his freedom (which will end up in
failure, another reference to his lack of having a say in his life, even when he -and the audience
as well- thinks he actually has- on one half of the screen and all major South Korean and Global
events on the other.
The soundtrack that accompanies this scene is ‘The Jailhouse Rock’, an electronic piece from the
score.
This scene concludes the first chapter of the movie, the prison. Oh Dae Su would now have to
find a way to adapt to the new environment, the big prison now. That’s the first time we hear an
adaptation of Oh Dae Su’s theme in 42. minute in the fight scene. The cue ‘In a lonely place’ is a
serene version of the main theme of the protagonist ‘The Old Boy’. The evolution in the theme
music for the main character is also a great example how the score evolves in harmony with the
movie’s plot. The scene that this cue has been used is also important because it gives away a
very important scoring technique that’s been used throughout the film. Although it’s a very
fierce and dramatic fighting scene with lots of actions especially when his last 15 years is

17

considered, the music itself is lacking all kinds of action, it represents the serenity and the relief
inside Oh Dae Su’s head, now that he’s a free man. This technique is used in the number of the
collaborations between Chan Wook Park and Yeong Jeong-Wo. There will be even more
dramatic uses of this technique in the later parts of the film.

The scene in Mido’s apartment is another very important one in terms of music. Not only
because we hear the an reduced version of Mido’s theme for the first time. - This also gives out
the pattern in the film where everyone’s personal themes are introduced as a reduced or altered
way and they change and evolve continuously as we progress through the movie, reaching it’s
final form towards the end, when our perspective of the characters are fully developed and
reached its final destination. This is particularly important in a film like Oldboy where the
opinon for a character by the audience would change a lot during the course of the film. The
scene in the subway is one of the first impressions of the movie’s transmission into a drama that
has some magical realist elements and it’s one of the hints for the audience to expect more from
the plot than a generic action flick from this film and there’s a big chunk of psychological and
philosophical drama coming up.

THE CHASE
After Oh Dae Su meets Mido the second chapter of the movie fully settles in. Where the
protagonist and his lovely companion tries to solve the mystery behind the man that prisoned Oh

18

Dae Su for 15 years. During this chapter, mainly in his occasional meetings with the ‘bad
character’ of the movie we start to see that our protagonist is not the perfect hero that would have
been expected from the movie’s hollywood equivalent, in contrary he has several dysfunctional
traits that slowly draws him away from the altar that the audience put him in the first chapter.
However the bad guy would remain mysterious until the late 2nd and final part of the movie.
Music also contributes a lot to the changes in the movie. As mentioned before, the character
themes used in that part of the movie, although harmonically the same, is a lot more aggressive
and increased in complexity as the characters do the same. For example he track ‘Oldboy’ is the
evolved version of the ‘A lonely place’ which was in the first part of the movie. This part of the
movie also has the only outsourced music of the soundtrack, a very fast and agitated version of
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Winter , an excellent performance by Kyung Wha Chung and the St
Luke's Chamber Ensemble.
The second part of the movie starts with Mido and Oh Dae Su searching for the prison that he
lived for 15 years. The soundtrack ‘Searches’ accompanies a very delicate and beautiful montage
of tasting food and running around the city. The contradictions are there again. although the
picture has some light and even comical elements, ‘The searchers’ is a very sad and depressing
tune, we can easily say that the aim was to put a mirror to Oh Dae Su’s inner thoughts rather then
actual events with the music. This is another very oftenly used technique in Chan Wook Park
films, especially the ones which he did with composer Jo Yeong-wook. There are numerous
examples for that technique which will be discussed later in Oldboy as well. When they finally
find the jail and Oh Dae Su goes there to check the place, we see another very cool trick from the

19

composer, the score suddenly becomes the source music as coming from the stereo in Mido’s
apartment and gets out of the movie in a very elegant and subtle way.
His scenes in prison after that contains some of the most intense scenes in the movie.
First the infamous pulling teeth and then the one-shot fighting scene. Both are genious
both in terms of how they’re shot and the use of music. The teeth pulling scene was the
scene that the critics were taled about the most because of its intense moments of using a
hammer to pull teeth and the way they’re shot in a very macro level. However all those
critics and accusations of being too vulgar is just what Chan Wook Park desired for that
scene. First of all there’s no actual footage of teeth being pulled out. It’s just the idea of
it. Exactly like how Oh Dae Su proved in the second teeth pulling scene in the movie,
where he was the target of the hammer this time. It’s always inside your head,
imagination is ten times worse than the real thing. The choice of music in both teeth
pulling sequences is very peculiar too. Chan Wook Park deliberately wanted to have
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Winter 1st movement for that scene. This clearly represents his
method of using classic music underscoring very vulgar or fiery scenes as a contractive
point. Four Seasons has also another purpose as all 3 movies of his revenge Trilogy has
a movement from the same magnum opus from Vivaldi so we can say it’s one of the few
thing that ties the trilogy together along with the idea of revenge. A classical listener can
easily tell that this version of Winter 1st mvmt, which was recorded for this movie by
Kyung Wha Chung and the St Luke's Chamber Ensemble is a lot faster and dynamically
sharp and fierce than the original. This is probably a decision to make it even more
dramatic and raise the tension level in a scene that basically runs in viewers’ minds.

The last one is obviously the ending scene, there’s so much going on in terms of emotions in that
scene that it's practically unscorable. Oh Dae-Su admits his defeat and more importantly admit

20

his love for his daughter in the way that Lee Woo-Jin wanted. He went through hypnosis again to
erase his memory to be able to be with his daughter. Our hero protagonist is our evil antagonist
now. The movie started as a revenge film, where we expected a man will beat up hundreds of
guys with the hammer we saw in his hand in the movie posters, and maybe get his girlfriend
back from the evil guy. But now it all came down to this, where our antagonist got the revenge
instead, and the audience’s empathy with it where our hero ended up in the same moral place
where Lee Woo-jin started.
Davies confirms that we learn in the middle of the movie that Oh Dae-Su isn’t primarily looking
for revenge anymore; he just wants Lee Woo-Jin to commit to his crime. At the point where Lee
Woo-Jin shows him the pacemaker he carry and gives Oh Dae-Su the option to kill him right
there and then, he choses truth instead of revenge. That means, at the end of the movie, we’re
back in the Greek mythology area again as ‘....this recalls Oedipus, who so relentlessly pursues
the truth in Oedipus Rex, only to be broken when he learns it.’ (Davies, 2004)
A solo clarinet playing a very innocent melody, you can almost feel that there’s no prejudice or
shame in it. It’s just what the moment represents in emotion, clearly tells what words can not tell
anymore. The harmony or the orchestration isn’t complicated or brilliant, but the score for a
feeling that’s so complicated that maybe no one has ever experienced before could only be that
plain and simple. By the end of the movie, where ‘The Last Waltz’ , the big name of the score,
starts in the background we see Oh Dae-su already chosen his path, the hero who at some point
of his journey had ignored his urge to get his revenge to find the truth, now tries his best to
escape from it.

21

Oldboy Cue List :
MX IN

MX
OUT

Cue
No.

Name

Notes:

1

Look Who’s
Talking

0:04:41 0:06:00

2

Somewhere in
the Night

0:07:31 0:08:04

3

0:07:39 0:10:10

4

0:11:01 0:11:31

5

0:00:00 0:01:22

Source
Music

Theme
The Count of
Monte Cristo

Source
Music

The Face - I Want
to Sing

the face - i want to sing

22
0:13:27 0:15:17

6

0:15:58 0:16:35

7

Jailhouse Rock
Source
Music

Theme
Music ends before the hit point. Music is like
god? knows everything beforehand. The
narator tells the story at the end.

0:17:21 0:17:51

8

---

0:20:08 0:20:48

9

Look Who’s
Talking

0:21:40 0:23:18

10

In a Lonely Place

0:24:34 0:25:28

11

0:25:33 0:27:12

12

0:27:14 0:28:46

13

It's Alive

Segway into the next scene

0:32:50 0:33:58

14

The Last Waltz
(Mido's Theme)

Last Part Music Edit

0:35:57 0:38:44

15

The Searchers

36:55 becomes source music.

0:39:03 0:39:34

16

Look Who's
Talking

The guy is listening

0:40:40 0:42:22

17

Four Seasons

Vivaldi

0:42:38 0:45:58

18

In a lonely place

He's alone in the fight

0:47:23 0:49:17

19

Top Floor

0:51:15 0:52:46

20

0:53:04 0:56:09

21

0:57:19 0:59:20

22

Four Seasons

1:03:27 1:05:27

23

Mido's theme

1:06:55 1:07:35

24

1:07:57 1:08:10

25

1:08:38 1:09:50

26

Dressed to Kill

1:09:50 1:12:33

27

Cries and
Whispers

Source
Music

Typical chinese restaurant music
Comes right after theme n cellphne melody. No
significant tension. The end cut

Source
Music

Mido's theme
Piano
This recording is from Kyung Wha Chung and
the St Luke's Chamber Ensemble!

The Old Boy Is a version of 'in a lonely place'. Heavier drums
Source
Music

High School
Anthem

Crossfade

23
Source
Music

1:14:35 1:14:48

28

1:16:49 1:17:37

29

For Whom the Bell
Tolls

1:19:29 1:20:49

30

Out of the Past

1:20:50 1:21:57

31

Cries and
Whispers (Piano)

The Silence After

1:23:22 1:24:23

32

Cries and
Whispers\

The Music comes in abruptly, like we forgot
about it and now we're back

1:26:03 1:28:32

33

In a lonely place

(Instead of Oldboy, they used the calmer
version, lack of confidence?)

1:31:35 1:35:33

34

Dressed to Kill /
Cul de Sac

1:36:08 1:37:24

35

1:37:55 1:39:34

36

1:43:50 1:45:50

37

------

1:47:51 1:48:15

38

------

1:49:32 1:51:14

39

Farewell my Lovely

1:53:21 1:54:49

40

The Big Sleep

1:56:01 1:56:48

41

The Big Sleep

1:57:03

42

The Last Waltz

END

Hair Saloon

Return of the sound

Very Similar to lonely theme

24

References:

•

Why Hollywood doesn't get South Korean cinema http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/29/old-boy-remake-south-korea-cinema

•

‘’Oldboy and the South Korean New Wave Cinema: An Interview With Author Urban Waite’’, 16
December 2013 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/court-haslett/oldboy-and-the-southkore_b_4441414.html

•
•
•

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/44358/Soundtrack-Oldboy/
‘’Oldboy’’, 2005 - http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005
‘’Revenge, Hypnotism, and Oedipus in Oldboy’’, 28 November 2013 -

(http://sequart.org/magazine/30991/revenge-hypnotism-and-oedipus-in-oldboy-2003/)