#56: Parasite
Release Date: October 11th, 2019
Format: Streaming (Max)
Written by: Han Jin-wonn and Bong Joon-ho
Directed by: Bong Joon-ho
4 Stars
Bong Joon-ho is one of my favorite working directors. He reminds me a bit of Akira Kurosawa, not so much with his visual style, but with his themes and how he communicates them to his audience. Kurosawa always tackled challenging themes, but communicated these ideas to his audience in an exciting and approachable manner. They aren’t meandering, philosophical thought pieces. They have tight plots and an engaging pace. Joon-ho’s films meet this same criteria.
At first glance Parasite might seem like a social and economic class critique, and it is. But that is also an oversimplification. The movie is about a poor family, the Kims, living on the margins of society, occupying a filthy semi-basement apartment in downtown Seoul. They scrape together whatever money they can earn individually to buy food for themselves and pay their modest rent. They also steal wifi from their upstairs neighbor and cheat people out of money whenever they can. When a family friend suggests to Ki-woo, the young adult son of the family, to take over his job as an English tutor for a wealthy family, the Parks, Ki-woo not only accepts, but sets in motion a scheme for the Kims to infiltrate and take over the Parks’ home.
How? First, Ki-woo will earn the trust of Mrs. Park as her daughter’s reliable and effective English tutor, and then Ki-woo will recommend “Jessica” (actually Ki-woo’s own sister, Ki-jung) to be the art tutor for the Parks’ young son. With both Ki-jung and Ki-woo in place, they can now frame the Parks’ chauffeur as an unprofessional philanderer and almost kill the Parks’ long-time house maid by exploiting her severe allergies to peaches. With the chauffeur and maid out of the way, the elder Kims angle their own way into the Parks’ day-to-day life and money.
It’s all despicable, awful behavior. And Joon-ho does an excellent job of eliciting feelings of disgust from the audience. But then he subtly, expertly allows the wealthy Parks to reveal their own troubling behavior and views to the audience.
Mr. Park is mildly disgusted by the smell of Mr. Kim’s clothes. Ms. Park expects her help to prioritize their children and the cleanliness of their home above anything else in their lives (the home is spectacular, but the children? Just the average type of kids that wealthy families tend to invest wasteful amounts of money and resources into. The kids become a reflection of their status as much as their high-end kitchen appliances and the Mercedes parked in the garage).
The elitist behavior of the Parks synthesizes with the parasitic behavior of the Kims halfway through the movie when Joon-ho’s story takes a left-turn to reveal that this house has some deep (literally) dark secrets. I remember seeing Parasite in theaters when it first came out, and the reveal of the basement took my breath away.
It’s at this point that Joon-ho’s themes solidify: Our innate human nature is the same, no matter our social class or upbringing. We are brought into this world with distinct advantages and disadvantages that determine our station in life. Our species has a dual capacity for familial love and savage survival. I agree with his film’s thesis.
These are the types of nuanced themes that are often ignored by most mainstream cinema, or bore audiences in tedious art house movies. Bong Joon-ho, arguably better than any of his contemporaries, is able to explore these ideas in his films in a way that feels exciting and innovative.
