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The New and the Old in Oldboy 219the powers of innovation that stem from the highly self-conscious and multimediatedcinematic practices all around the world.Narrative Causality: Who, What, WhyThe story is about an ordinary man called Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-Sik), whobecomes involved in an enigmatic game with tragic dimensions. After gettingdrunk one night, he is kidnapped by a stranger and wakes up to findhimself in a private makeshift prison. Oh Dae-Su cannot understand whoimprisoned him and why, and he anxiously wonders how long his ordealwill last. Time passes agonizingly slowly, as the hero is tortured not onlyby his questions remaining unanswered but also by the news of his wife’smurder, for which the police blame him. The television set in his room ishis only contact with the real world and the urge to take revenge on theperson who destroyed his life becomes his sole purpose. Fifteen years passand the hero is finally released in a suitcase on the rooftop of a building.The film dedicates almost 20 minutes of its screen-time to establish a highlyintriguing narrative premise that poses several questions and triggers offa long chain of events until the final revelations. The mysteries that thehero needs to solve are three: who is responsible for the imprisonment,what is his motivation, and why the period of 15 years?Yet, soon after Oh Dae-Su regains the right to walk around freely in thestreets of Seoul, the villain returns at the helm of the story showing off hisomnipotence. He hands Oh Dae-Su a wallet full of money and a cell phonethrough a passer-by and makes his first direct contact with him over thephone. During their brief conversation, he probes the hero to think backon his life and he poses an enigma, saying “Remember this: Be it a rock ora grain of sand, in water they sink as the same.” This phone-call initiatesa new trial for Oh Dae-Su, as he continues to be a pawn in the villain’sgame, the rules and goals of which remain obscure. However, he will notbe alone in this game anymore; the narrative promptly offers him a youngfemale partner called Mido who works as a chef at the restaurant whereOh Dae-Su walks in on his first night after his liberation. Mido immediatelybecomes his companion and then lover, as the two characters bondtogether in the pursuit of answers.So far, the narrative of Oldboy contains some very classical compositionaland generic motivations (Bordwell et al. 1985). As far as the former areconcerned, the center of the narrative is a male protagonist whose fate and