The Kims are a family at the bottom rungs of society. Literally, since their shitty, one bedroom apartment is in a basement. They’re so poor that they have to use a neighbors fumigation to kill the cockroaches crawling over their belongings. They’re willing to do just about anything to get ahead, even if that means lying, and getting other people fired. Which is precisely what they wind up doing when the son gets an opportunity to act as a rich girl’s English tutor. He forges a university degree, and when the parents of this girl like him, he’s able to find the rest of his relatives employment as the rich people’s art teacher, driver and maid, respectively. All is well, until they realize that the maid they got fired has been hiding something in the rich people’s basement, and that they just might have walked into something far more dangerous than they could have imagined.
Parasite is a film with invisible craft. What I mean by that is, the editing, cinematography and storytelling are all so clean, efficient and effective that you don’t even think about it. It is a movie where every set-up is paid off, every line of dialogue has purpose, and every single shot is constructed in such a way as to both advance the story, and wring every bit of dramatic tension out of a moment possible. This is a film entirely in Korean, and yet, I know for a fact that if you were to remove the subtitles, anyone could follow the story. That’s a sign of excellent directing and writing right there. I’ve expressed my admiration for Bong Joon-Ho before, but this may just be his best film yet. It’s funny, suspenseful, superbly acted, and smart. This last aspect is expected, since all his films have social commentary. Okja is about the meat industry and animal cruelty. The Host is a critique of the American military’s use of chemical weapons in Asia. Snowpiercer is a deconstruction of class warfare and even religion. Parasite is like this last flick in the sense that it deals with the class divide, but it’s much more realistic and nuanced. This is a film set entirely in the real world, with real issues that many people face. It also forces the audience to ask themselves hard questions, like is morality a luxury? There’s a scene about halfway through where the Kims discuss their rich employers, who seem nice. The Kims, however, believe that this niceness is just a byproduct of their wealth. If they were poor, if they really had to struggle to survive, they’d be just as cruel and conniving as the Kims themselves. This scene is both a clever means for Bong to sneak in a thesis statement, and to encourage us the viewers to not judge these characters. Because, let’s be clear, they do some very bad things over the course of the film. But you never get the sense that it’s because of cruelty or maliciousness. They truly are acting out of self-preservation.
Now, all that said, the film isn’t perfect. For starters, the movie contains some of Bong’s weird sexual politics. As in Mother, you’ve got a 30-year-old man dating a 16-year-old girl in this flick. And before you hit me with a “it could be different in Korea” defense, I checked, and the age of consent there is 20. So I really don’t know why he likes including this so much in his films. On top of that, the rich family whom the Kim’s manipulate are shown to be unrealistically stupid. They never once get thrown off by the sheer convenience of everything. Like, they never question why, as soon as they hire this English tutor, their old employees suddenly get sick, or reveal themselves to be grossly incompetent. And this isn’t the only instance of the movie stretching credibility. At one point in the film, a character, I won’t say which, gets their head crushed by a rock twice. In real life, that person would be so, so dead. But in this flick, they’re fine.
Those nitpicks aside, Parasite is one of my favorite films of the year, right up there with Shazam, First Love and The Farewell. It’s funny, suspenseful, and most of all, relevant. Even if you don’t like foreign films, you’ll be able to enjoy this flick, since it’s a straightforward comedy-thriller in the vein of the Coen Brothers’ work. Definitely give it a watch if its playing at a theater near you.
liusviews 