‘No Other Choice’: Park Chan-wook and Lee Byung-hun in film that disrupts the job market

Boasting a title of business jargon related to shirking responsibility, Park Chan-wook’s anti-capitalist portrait There Is No Other Option may feel too real to those burned out by modern jobs.

Based on Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel An axe and written by Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee, and Don McKellar, the film offers a biting social commentary by asking the question: Is killing for the role you want a reasonable moral choice? in this economy?

Mashable UK editor Shannon Connelan sat down with Park once There Is No Other Option star Lee Byung-hun to discuss the film’s exploitation of the highly competitive job market.

“We all live in a capitalist system, we all go along with it, and we all try hard to live in it. And we don’t often question the system itself,” Park told Mashable. “But when we come to the question of ‘what if we could live in a different situation?’ it leads to a very tricky situation where you consider ideas to remove the system, or we combine ideas to take action to destroy the system. It’s a very difficult situation to be in.

“Regardless, in order to keep the program, we still need to ask the program again. So, in the film, I didn’t want to make it too theoretical. I wanted to follow each person and in that process, lead the audience to ask themselves questions about the program.”

Each person said There Is No Other Option is paper company employee Yoo Man-soo (Lee), who loses his job in a brutal corporate restructuring. With his family to take care of, including his wife Mi-ri (The Crash Comes To YouYe-jin’s son) and two children, Man-soo pursues to find a job – and when the opportunity arises, he takes drastic measures.

“When [Park] he approached me and said, ‘let’s tell a story together,’ I really enjoyed the message [of the film] and the question. I found it very rewarding to tell as an actor,” Lee told Mashable. “Playing this normal guy, a family man who’s dealing with a very painful reality, and trying so hard to make things work, and ultimately ends up making this terrible decision.”

Notably, the film creates a modern-day nightmare about a job interview, as Man-soo faces a terrifying, often dehumanizing process in his job search.

“I don’t think I’ve been to many auditions myself, but I’ve had a lot of occasions when I have to audition actors for auditions, and I’ve seen how nervous people are when they’re in an audition situation,” said Park. “Moreover, at the beginning of my career, I had many meetings with producers to convey my stories to them, which is like an interview. So because I have been on both sides of the so-called interview, I know how difficult it is to be in that situation.

“Especially as an Asian, we are always taught to be humble, and humility is considered a very important aspect in our lives. So to be in a situation where you have to sell yourself and hide your weaknesses while also being humble, it is even more difficult, which I think is more difficult for us in the Eastern culture than Western people.”

Watch the full interview above. There Is No Other Option now in cinemas.