Certification. 15
Director. Bong Joon Ho
Cast. Park So Dam, Lee Jung Eun, Song Kang Ho, Cho Yeo Jeong, Chang Hyae Jin, Jung Hyeon Jun, Lee Sun Kyun, Choi Woo Shik, Jung Ziso.
Rating. 93%
Parasite premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it became the first South Korean film to win the Palme d'Or. The critically acclaimed film then went on to win four awards at the 2000 Academy Awards - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. In doing so, Parasite became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. These accolades are even more impressive when you consider the films released in the same year - the likes of 1917, Ad Astra, A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Knives Out, The Lighthouse, Little Women, Midsommar and Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood.
Director, Bong Joon Ho has never made a straightforward film in his life. He has an affinity for genre cinema, but never felt confined or constrained by the rules of the genre. Memories Of Murder is so much more than a psychological thriller, just as The Host is more than a run-of-the-mill horror film. Bong Joon Ho defies taxonomy. Instead, he has invented an entire genre all to himself containing a collection of fluid films with a degree of controlled instability that encourages metamorphosis before your very eyes. Parasite, his most assured piece of work to date, epitomises this distinctive genre.
From the outset, Parasite is intriguing, beguiling and entertaining. When Kim Ki-woo's (Choi Woo Shik) educated friend moves to America, he asks Kim Ki-woo to take over the job of tutor to the teenage daughter of nouveau riche technology mogul, Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun Kyun). The first hour or so of Parasite is simply one of the most spectacular confidence tricks of all time. A film every bit as delicious and devious as The Sting, every bit as slick and stylish as Ocean's Eleven and every bit as attractive and alluring as Catch Me If You Can.
Parasite is well-written and Bong Joon Ho demonstrates that he is an exceptional storyteller. The film does not hinge on major plot twists, but the cleverness of the structure. With a Hitchcockian verve, the director playfully establishes the premise, before pulling the rug from under you. The film transforms - over the course of an act or scene, I'm not entirely sure - in such a manner that the audience do not even notice the evolution. Enthralling one moment, unbearably tense the next, Bong Joon Ho unpackages the layers with elegance and economy. I could not take my eyes off the screen.
Bong Joon Ho is able to construct entire breathless set pieces in the most confined environments - in the Kim's cramped, semi-basement living quarters or around the wooden coffee table in the Park's impeccable living room.
These set-pieces pulse with morally challenging chaos. These nail-biting, heart-in-mouth moments come from the fact that the audience does not know who deserves to survive or not. Whilst Bong Joon Ho creates a strong empathy for the Kim family in the opening act, the ploy hinges on the consequences of their economic aspiration. In order to advance, someone else has to be displaced (and presumably suffer).
At no point does Bong Joon Ho ennoble or romanticise the Kim clan's poverty. Instead, this is a tough, uncompromising and unsentimental view of what some people must do to survive. The film opens with the younger members of the family roaming the cramped, squalid semi-basement rooms hunting for free Wi-Fi. We watch as the Kims fold and assemble pizza boxes for a nearby restaurant to earn a meagre income. Living together in such close quarters has bred in them a matter-of-fact intimacy, steely resolve and self-sufficiency.
Bong Joon Ho has repeatedly shown an interest in class conflict. In Snowpiercer, the train serves as a horizontal metaphor for capitalism. But Parasite is the most forensic examination of the subject to date. The film's title, Parasite is an allegory of class relationships. It eludes to the Kim family, lowly in the hierarchy, and dependent on a higher organism for survival. But equally, the title could also represent the Park family, whose lives of extravagant decadence represent the genuine moral drain on capitalist society resources. The conflict comes when these two taxonomic phylogenies meet, and the bottom and the top of the financial ladder start to interact.
The emotional weight of Parasite delivers a parable that suggests society can only be as strong as its most vulnerable people. The film begins in exhilaration and ends in devastation. But the triumph of Parasite is that the audience lives and breathes every second of it. Bong Joon Ho's film is a brilliant piece of art. A genuine masterpiece.
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