“I Ruminate A Lot On These Issues Of Morality”: Park Chan-wook On His Acclaimed Pitch-Black Comedy, No Other Choice

A synthesiser of styles and a savant of social satirism, Park Chan-wook is one of the 21st century’s essential cinematic minds. As his latest feature, No Other Choice continues to garner critical acclaim – where is the 62-year-old’s long-deserved Oscar?

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions,” said Modernist poet TS Eliot. It’s a compelling concept – that the demarcations of what is right or wrong are moulded by each individual’s hand, sculpted from their own experience and outlook. After all, who begins with malevolence in mind, no matter how morally dubious they finish? 

The murkiness of morality is a bottomless thematic well that Korean screenwriter and filmmaker Park Chan-wook has been exploring for over twenty years. “I ruminate a lot on these issues of morality and moral decisions,” the 62-year-old muses, joining Man About Town while visiting London on a sizeable press tour for his latest feature, No Other Choice. Based broadly on American crime writer Donald E Westlake’s 1997 novel, The Ax, the two-time Golden Globe-nominated caper is an anxiety-stricken, rip-roaring smorgasbord of body horror, gross-out humour, familial drama and razor-sharp social commentary, following the jaded, addiction-prone Man-su in his murderous quest to find a new job. Stylistically transgressive and perniciously entertaining, it once again affirms its maker as one of his generation’s key cinematic voices. 

Park communicates with me through a translator, though no language barrier can diminish the inquisition and sagacity he radiates on a brisk Friday afternoon in mid-January. The auteur behind some of the most iconic and forward-thinking Korean films in modern history, he’s long been one of the leaders of his nation’s industry, producing works defined both by their wisdom and sincerity, as well as his facility for suffusing personal perspective without explicitly reflecting his own life. He speaks softly, with a clarity and confidence: “I experience dilemmas and moments of making [challenging moral] decisions as well,” he says, gently grazing on fruit between sentences as the interpreter relays his words. “Of course, they’re very small decisions, but I think when morality becomes involved, it’s not the scale that matters. Even a very small decision becomes very heavy.”

From the imprisoned, troubled Dae-su Oh in his 2003 symphony of revenge Oldboy to the charismatic, conniving Sook-Hee in 2016’s twisting sapphic love story The Handmaiden, and now the quivering, tenacious Man-su in No Other Choice, Park’s characters muddle the imperceptible boundaries between good and bad. “The characters in my films are incomplete, not perfect or just,” he says. They are anti-heroes, incentivised by what is internally important and the desires of those they love and care for. Ultimately, their intentions culminate in shocking and compelling tragedy. His creations are a mirror to society – a vessel of humanity’s darkest urges. “What they go through and their minds – they aren’t so different from what I or we go through,” Park adds with a wry irony. 

No Other Choice’s protagonist Man-su is, despite his litany of flaws, one of the most relatable characters in Park’s filmography. For his central performer, the auteur enlisted one of his earliest collaborators, Lee Byung-hun, who starred in the director’s 2000 period action-war drama Joint Security Area, which became the highest-grossing South Korean film in history at the time. The actor’s stock has risen a great deal since the pair last worked together, thanks to acclaimed starring roles in Netflix global hit Squid Game and immensely popular K-drama Our Blues. He returns to Park’s world in breathtaking form, his frantic, feverish turn as the increasingly out-of-control Man-su receiving a nod for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the 2026 Golden Globes.

“We wanted someone who felt very typical, a very neighbourly man that was easy for everyone to imagine,” Park remembers when he and Lee came to shape the character. “So this is someone who is adequately good, devoted to his job and wants to be a good father and a husband.” When we meet Man-su, he’s a seemingly mild-mannered, hard-working, family-oriented man, barbecuing with his wife, Miri (played with pitch-black perfection by Son Ye-jin), stepson Si-one (Woo Seung Kim) and daughter Ri-one (So Yul Choi). He’s hoping to gain a promotion from the middling position at a paper mill that he’s contentedly worked at for years; however, the opposite happens. He gets laid off by the company’s new American bosses, due to expansions into AI technology and digital machinery, with Man-su’s average résumé and lack of charismatic bite leaving him unable to find new work. Clouded by self-destruction and plagued by a returning demon from his past – alcoholism – when a potential position opens, he sees only one choice: to create a fake company to lure in the more-qualified competition, before killing them off, one by one. 

The nature of this decision – to choose to pick off his contemporaries rather than enact revenge on his former bosses – compelled Park when he read The Ax in a way that few plot directions had before. So much so, it led him to spend 20 years trying to make this film. After first reading the book in 2005 and being invited to pen a foreword for the Korean edition in 2006, he tried to drum up support for a feature film in the US throughout the late 2000s and 2010s, before eventually striking gold back in his home nation, kicking off production in 2024. He felt the story must be retold, and that he was the man to do it. “[Man-su] feels that he’s been betrayed and abandoned by the company, and in a typical novel, this main character would act upon vengeance on the bosses or the executives that fired him or become involved in a labour rights movement,” he says. “But instead, what this main character chooses to do is create a fake company, put out a job post, collect résumés, and pick out superior candidates among those résumés, which is fundamentally the same thing that a company would do – as victims.”

It’s a peculiar, self-aggrandising choice – certainly not his only one, as the irony of the film’s title suggests – that results in a series of outrageous, deadpan set-pieces that are disgusting and hilarious in equal measure. The way Park guides the farcical unfolding of scenarios illustrates a technician at the very top of his game, masterfully raising the stakes to ludicrous heights with each passing murder. Man-su’s descent into madness is artful, whether via the consistent glaze of sweat that invades his brow or the deep-seated insecurity that turns to desperation and panic. For the viewer, it’s a thrill, but an awkward and uneven one, like witnessing Patrick Bateman’s narcissism tick into overdrive in American Psycho, or Travis Bickle’s misplaced saviour complex in Taxi Driver.

For Park, though, no matter how strange and sometimes horrifying these situations that Man-su finds himself in are, there remains a relatability to the character’s plight, the feeling that it could happen to anyone. “How the story unfolds was completely beyond my expectation,” he marvels. “And even though it might feel bizarre, in some ways, you can also understand how this could happen. I was surprised that, strangely enough, we end up being convinced that this evil and selfish solution that the main character came up with was the only solution left for him.”

It’s through the lens of Man-su’s wife, Miri, that the consequences of her husband’s actions become clearer. As No Other Choice steamrolls towards its grisly final third, so does the chaos that Man-su’s murderous escapades bring on his family, engendering irrevocable circumstances for Miri and their children. She finds out the truth, and is horrified, and yet her subsequent actions may surprise viewers. Rather than confront her life partner on his drastic and devastating actions, she aids and abets him by remaining silent. Why? “I think you can interpret it as the wife’s love for her husband or perhaps she was concerned about her children,” Park elucidates. “I think more than being concerned for her husband, she was prioritising the fact that this man is the father of her children. I really think it’s the mixture of all of the above. When the audience sees the ending of the film, I want them to have a different interpretation for how the future of this family is going to unfold, depending on each audience’s tendencies and the situations and the realities that they’re living in.”

No Other Choice plays out like a cautionary tale without a conclusive comeuppance, which only adds to the subtle and interpretative layers that Park builds. He laughs, remembering the opinion of one journalist from across the Atlantic regarding his chosen denouement. “I did meet someone in America who criticised the film, asking me why I had to give this character a perfect, happy ending when he’s done so much wrong. But I think I gave enough hints to foreshadow that the future of the character is going to be very bleak.” And he’s right. There’s not the blatantness of a sour ending for Man-su; instead, brooding undertones of what he is yet to face. 

Like many of Park’s films, beneath its humour, No Other Choice offers a sobering look at society, the human condition, and the state of the future. Here, he unleashes his witty wrath on capitalism, specifically its intersection with masculinity. The film isn’t necessarily a direct criticism, but rather an honest contemplation on the hyper-digitalism of the contemporary world. “I do think this is a film about capitalism, so naturally it does dig into the problems of the capitalist system,” he agrees. “But it doesn’t propose an alternative solution to capitalism, nor does it propose that we find an alternative system to live in instead of capitalism. To be honest, I haven’t found the right alternative solution to capitalism when I look back on the history of mankind. So I can’t say that this is a hopeful anti-capitalist argument that I’m making in this film.”  

A passion project through and through, Park’s latest effort, with its seamless genre dexterity and heavy-hitting entertainment value, is one of his most digestible to a global market and among his finest spun cinematic webs since Oldboy. It’s very much been in the awards conversation, most notably nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival, in receipt of a duo of nods at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and a trio at the Golden Globes. Yet, in the nominations for the paramount victory lap of them all – the Academy Awards – the film was surprisingly shut out. Yes, it’s a strong category this year in the Best International Feature Film category with Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt, and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident. But you could argue that Park’s opus more than holds its own against those films, and has been met with a warmer critical reception than the latter two. A long-time, legendary filmmaker returning to the height of his powers – it had a nomination written all over it. 

Astoundingly, Park has never been nominated for an Oscar. As one of Asia’s pre-eminent filmmakers of the 21st century, the freeze-out is befuddling. It begs a wider question of the Academy – is Korean film generally overlooked? The brazen exception is Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, which rightly amassed four major awards at the 2020 ceremony, including Best Film and Best Director as well as an international category win. Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari picked up several nominations and one win in 2021, but it was technically an American production. Celine Song’s 2023 Past Lives was also an American-Korean co-production. Maggie Kang did become the first director of South Korean descent to win in the Animated Feature category at this year’s ceremony, but the double-winning KPop Demon Hunters was also an American production. Outside of that, recognition has been sporadic. It feels like there’s still much to answer for in the celebration of Korean cinema, and especially for one of its leading pillars – Park.  

Nevertheless, with No Other Choice as the latest gem in his crown, achievements continue to come the filmmaker’s way as he settles into his 60s. He’s just been announced as the President of Cannes Film Festival for its 2026 edition – the first South Korean to ever receive the honour, with Wong Kar-wai the only other Asian filmmaker to head the jury, some 20 years back. Park doesn’t strike you as an individual too bothered by personal accolades, however. He’s a director who finds thrill in strange, cerebral stories, and a veteran of unsettling cinema. No one has made extremity so engaging. There’s no inkling as of yet on what he’ll do next, but it seems likely that Park Chan-wook will continue in his pursuit of moral examination. “Through these films, I want [to create] an opportunity for all of us to ask ourselves questions,” he finishes. “About the smaller moral problems that we deal with in our everyday lives.” Get thinking. 

No Other Choice is available on MUBI now. All imagery courtesy of MUBI