No Other Choice - Evil Or Not?

Indexed: 2026-05-22

[00:00:13]Park Chan-wook’s latest film, No Other Choice, has some of the most inventive  transitions I’ve seen in years.

[00:00:19]That transition was so smooth I  almost missed it on my first watch.

[00:00:23]This cheeky one circles back later in a  beautifully layered and frankly lavish manner.

[00:00:31]And this one......is just cool.

[00:00:41]And that’s before we even talk  about the zooms and dolly shots.

[00:00:46]Take a look at this scene between  Man-su, the protagonist, and his wife, Miri.

[00:00:50]The catch here is that both of them are  hiding something from each other.

[00:00:54]The two have spent the last 24 hours tending to their own  affairs, consumed by their respective pursuits, before finally reuniting at the end  of a long night in a loving embrace.

[00:01:04]The scene begins with Miri counting down from 60 in response to Man-su’s request to stay together for one minute.

[00:01:10]To focus on their emotional distance, the camera dollies out with the countdown, making the hug feel smaller and less secure.

[00:01:18]But within seconds, Man-su makes another request: Now, here’s where things get interesting.  Instead of letting the scene play out, Park Chan-wook shifts to a dolly in,  reversing the established emotional undertone, rebuilding intimacy, and emphasizing  Man-su’s wish to hold on to the moment.

[00:01:38]It’s no doubt a visually striking scene, but  its purpose extends beyond mere surface appeal.

[00:01:44]For one, it reveals the position of  the characters in the relationship.

[00:01:48]If you consider the timing of the dolly  in and out, and to whom they each belong, you will see that the dolly out is used  for the character whose secret has led her to become emotionally withdrawn from the relationship, whereas the dolly in is used for the character whose secret stems from his affection toward his partner.

[00:02:07]This naturally emphasizes the  performative quality of their relationship, making everything  feel detached and constrained.

[00:02:15]Zoom, on the other hand, is a naturally  uncomfortable visual technique.

[00:02:20]They compress space, engineer perception, and displace physical movement without changing the world itself.

[00:02:27]Consider the film’s opening sequence, whose  main goal is to convey a sense of pretense.

[00:02:32]While there are other tricks that help develop  this feeling—like the deceptive point-of-view shot, or the vertical dolly shot that visually  separates the family —the zoom is what dictates the color of the family space, painting it as constructed rather than natural.

[00:02:47]Eventually, the sequence wraps  up with a familiar hug, but here, you are greeted with a slow push-in on Man-su’s  face, with cutaway inserts of other family members that place him at the center of everything.  This turns the others as mere components of his private perspective—his ideal self—or  perhaps, a thin veneer of manufactured perfection.

[00:03:07]As the camera slowly pulls out from  the family, and as the day turns into night, you realize that the moment is but an  idealized fantasy, destined to fall apart.

[00:03:22]Voila.

[00:03:23]Zooms, dolly shots and transitions.

[00:03:26]Great.

[00:03:27]But that’s not what we’re here to talk about, because the most interesting role of the zoom—and  in fact, of almost every visual technique in No Other Choice— lies in establishing and maintaining  distance between the characters and the audience.

[00:03:47]No Other Choice follows You Man-su,  a middle-class man who, after being fired from his paper manufacturing job of 25  years, decides to kill off his competitors to regain his position and restore his status.

[00:04:00]Although the narrative remains closely aligned with Man-su, the film’s visual techniques preserve a careful emotional remove, ensuring the audience is never fully  attached to or repulsed by his actions.

[00:04:13]The vertical dolly shots remove  the audience from the scene and everything within by showing an  objective view of the film world.

[00:04:20]The recurring shots featuring mirrors accentuate  the duality and separation of characters, along with the film’s voyeuristic quality,  to reinforce the viewer-character divide.

[00:04:30]Conversely, there are elements that narrow the gap, like this awesome J-cut, where the sound of thunder from the upcoming scene bleeds into the strobing dance floor.

[00:04:40]After a tense confrontation between Man-su and his wife, Miri, the two spaces begin to feel emotionally continuous.

[00:04:46]The J-cut indicates that the dance hall now  takes on a storm-like quality, while Man-su’s inner turmoil—guilt, jealousy, and loss of  control—is represented by the storm itself.

[00:04:58]There are numerous examples of similar  visual associations in No Other Choice that serve to bring the audience closer to  Man-su by exaggerating his emotional state.

[00:05:08]But the most compelling effects arise from techniques that deliberately  sustain the unstable distance.

[00:05:14]At its most basic, the film uses swing shots  as a visual narrator, mirroring the audience’s ambivalence toward Man-su, and, at times, that of other characters.

[00:05:28]Is he justified or not?

[00:05:30]Good or bad?

[00:05:32]The swing shots carry our  oscillating judgement throughout the film.

[00:05:39]A similar but more assertive force  comes from the film’s use of light, often read symbolically as the Sun, or as light in its various forms.

[00:05:48]There are numerous scenes where the Sun acts as an unavoidable light of truth, a divine force that exposes everything.

[00:05:55]At a more fundamental level, this “light”  simply falls on spaces seeking absolute truth.

[00:06:01]In other cases, it constantly confronts  those attempting to escape reality.

[00:06:06]At his first interview, Man-su fails  utterly to evade the sunlight.

[00:06:10]But after successfully getting rid of his competitors  and fully suppressing his sense of morality, he is finally able to block  the light—using his own son.

[00:06:19]Speaking of, there is also this  scene, where Man-su and his son, Si-one, literally escape the light through the  camera that crosses the axis mid-conversation.

[00:06:29]Notice how the scene also  frequently cuts to shadows, reducing the two to abstract shapes—a visual  idea of violence and criminal influence.

[00:06:37]The clash between the real Man-su and his shadow  version echoes the earlier swing shots.

[00:06:43]And of course, even when the Sun is  absent, light persists—in the moon, in lamps, in flashlights—continuing to expose  the characters in spaces devoid of sunlight.

[00:07:02]Lastly, there is the film’s circulation of words, actions, and associations between characters  that blurs the boundaries between them and makes them seem one and the same. This  is particularly evident from Man-su, who has been performative from the very  start, as suggested from his palm notes.

[00:07:20]You’ll often hear him recycling lines of  dialogue from others to propel his plan, defend his stance, argue against others, and...lube, I guess.

[00:07:42]It also manifests in repeated actions  and misrecognitions between characters, further weakening their individuality.

[00:07:57]The resulting loss of character distinction  disrupts the viewer’s ability to judge them, since actions and words can no longer be  reliably attributed to those who perform them.

[00:08:11]I’m going to leave you with a sequence that not  only effectively captures the ideas examined, but further develops the leads and themes, while merging identities and reminding  the viewers of the maintained distance.

[00:08:24]First, some context: Man-su is at his last  target, Seon-chool’s cabin on a remote island, digging a hole to partially bury and  immobilize him.

[00:08:34]Meanwhile, back at home, Miri hears from Si-one that Man-su may have committed a murder and disposed of a body.

[00:08:40]The sequence begins by cross-cutting between  Man-su and Miri shoveling at two different locations, gradually intensifying into  parallel editing that conflates their movements.

[00:08:50]Through match-on-action transitions,  the film creates deliberate misdirection, combining them into a single, seemingly shared process.

[00:08:58]And since everything is framed and staged as if they’re digging the same hole from opposite sides, a collision appears imminent.

[00:09:05]In the meantime, we get a separate dream sequence from Si-one.

[00:09:09]We didn’t get to examine it,  but a bonsai symbolizes controlled growth, directly reflecting Man-su’s actions.

[00:09:15]He is not merely committing a crime—he  is controlling, containing, and shaping reality.

[00:09:22]As with the use of light, shadows, and parallel editing, Si-one turning into Man-su achieves a similar overlap of their identities.

[00:09:30]Man-su turning on the light signals  his desire to exercise authority (or at least, that is how it appears to Si-one) and Si-one shining light onto his father’s face conveys his wish to know the objective truth. The  fish-eye version of Si-one’s perspective at that moment frames Man-su as something  overwhelming, threatening, and inescapable.

[00:09:51]With a fitting match cut, Si-one’s wish is  visually realized by Miri discovering the buried body; but just as she reaches for it, we cut to  Man-su brushing dirt off Soon-cheol’s face.

[00:10:07]The intentionally misleading cut produces a moment of  unsettling recognition: that even with the truth exposed, Miri may choose to bury it and move on.  As was suggested by the editing, there may be more similarities than differences between searching  for the truth and concealing it.

[00:10:26]In digging for too long, they ended up on the same side,  and Miri becomes part of the problem as well.

[00:10:43]Apart from the fact that “no other choice”  should really be read as “it can’t be helped”, it is blatantly obvious that there absolutely were  other choices to be made.

[00:10:55]But 어쩔수가없다, which was intentionally stylized as a single word, is about the attitude toward an uncontrollable situation, negotiating and optimizing your  response to minimize tension.

[00:11:08]You may call it rationalization or weakness, but  to some, it will be responsibility and strength.

[00:11:15]As idiosyncratic yet human characters  moving through a patchwork of equally curious experiences, they are only trying to  provide new perspectives for the audience.

[00:11:27]And if you can’t accept that, well, you probably had no other choice.

[00:11:34]Right?

[00:11:35]Thanks for watching.

[00:11:39]Hello everyone, thank you very much for watching  if you are still here. It’s been a year, and some more, I was on medical leave and now I  am back, really appreciate all those who cared and waited. I knew I had to talk about No Other  Choice before anything else, but there were SO many things I could talk about, as is with any  Park Chan-wook films, that I had to narrow down on a specific topic and really try hard not  to go off tangent. Hopefully I'll be able to talk about it down the road because there were a lot of fun stuff that I could potentially delve into.

[00:12:12]Now, what helped me narrow down on a specific topic was revisiting PCW’s previous film, Decision to Leave,  and comparing it to this one—how they connect visually, thematically, etc. which I was only able to  do thanks to MUBI, the sponsor for today’s video.

[00:12:30]MUBI is an online curated streaming service  dedicated to elevating great cinema from all around the globe, ranging from works of iconic  directors to emerging auteurs. It’s a great way to watch films you already love, and an even better  way to discover new films you haven’t seen before.

[00:12:46]Like I said, for this video, I watched  Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave on MUBI, and alongside it, could watch  other films in MUBI’s selections, which helped me tremendously with  my research and script writing.

[00:12:58]And of course, I’m currently in Canada, and so  your MUBI selections might look different depending on your location, but  rest assured, MUBI always has a carefully picked selection of works that  are more than worth watching. Better yet, right now, you can try MUBI free for 30 days  by using my link at mubi.com/spikimamovies, that’s mubi.com/spikimamovies- so definitely check  it out, and I’ll see you again in the next one.