The second movie reviewed in our latest episode is Parasite, and here’s what I wrote about it on Facebook when writing about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 2019.
Another international filmmaker whose work I’ve never been able to fully embrace is Bong Joon Ho. I recognize he’s one of a handful of directors who address the fact, as he puts it, we live in a world called capitalism, but too often, I find his work heavy-handed, even though, in his previous films (The Host, Snowpiercer), he expressed that idea through genre. Ironically, when Bong decided to address the subject more directly in Parasite (which he co-wrote with Han Jin-Won), he made what, for me, is his best film to date. It also made history; it’s only the second film to win both the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture at the Oscars (Marty was the other one)*, and the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
In Seoul, the Kim family – father Ki-Taek (Song Kang Ho), mother Chung-Sook (Jang Hye-Jin), daughter Ki-Jung (Park So-Dam), and son Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-Sik) – live in a sub-basement apartment. They fold pizza boxes for a living, which barely helps to make ends meet. One day, Ki-Woo’s friend Min (Park Seo-Joon) visits them. Min is moving abroad, so he recommends Ki-Woo to take over his job as tutor to Da-Hye (Jung Ji-So), daughter of the Park family – Dong-Ik (Lee Sun-Kyun), the father, and Yeon-Kyo (Cho Yeo-Jeong). Ki-Woo makes a good impression on the Parks (especially Da-Hye, who develops a crush on him), and when he notices Da-Hye’s hyperactive younger brother, Da-Song (Jung Hyun-Jun), likes to draw, Ki-Woo recommends his “friend” Jessica – actually Ki-Jung – to be his art therapist. Similarly, Ki-Jung “accidentally” leaves her panties in the Park’s limo, framing the driver, Yoon (Park Keun-Rok) for having sex in the car, and recommends Ki-Taek as a driver (he did work as a driver previously). Finally, when Ki-Woo and Ki-Jung find out Moon-Gwang (Lee Jung-Eun), the Park’s housekeeper, is allergic to peaches, they exploit that to make it look like she actually has tuberculosis, and tell the Parks about a cleaning service that caters to rich people like them, and which “happens” to use Chung-Sook, who takes over as housekeeper. With all four members of the Kim family now gainfully employed, things seem to be looking up, but looks can be deceiving.
The simplest way to tell this story would have been to make one family evil and one family good, but even though Bong drew on sources that did stack the deck like that – the 1960 version of The Housemaid – he doesn’t make that mistake. All of the characters here have both their good and bad traits (including one character I won’t talk about because it constitutes a major spoiler), while at the same time, we see how circumstances have shaped them. At one point, Ki-Taek says the Parks are nice even though they’re rich, whereas Chung-Sook tells him the Parks are nice only because they’re rich. At the same time, Bong also shows the trappings of wealth and what they do; he and production designer Lee Ha-Jun designed the house the Parks lived in, and it feels clean and modern (Yeon-Kyo is a germaphobe who also wants to protect her son – why that is constitutes another spoiler – while Dong-Ik simply likes it that way), but also overwhelming, remote, and reeking of privilege. By contrast, the Kims’ apartment is cramped and filthy, especially when a rainstorm floods the place. You can see why the Kims would do just about anything to crawl out of that existence, and why the Parks take their own place so seriously, while at the same time trapped by it as much as they are defined by it.
In case you think this sounds like a tract, Bong also makes it funny. Right from the beginning, when we see Ki-Jung and Ki-Woo rooting around in the apartment trying to latch onto a neighbor’s Wi-Fi signal, Bong exploits the comic potential of the material. The lengths the Kims go to in order to not only secure employment for everyone, but also to get the chauffeur and the housekeeper out of the way, is darkly funny. The way “Jessica” bullshits her way through teaching Da-Song is another comic aspect (the dark irony, of course, is she actually does him some good) – the “jingle” she does to recite the backstory made up for her soon became a popular GIF and meme.
At the same time, Bong takes the characters and relationships seriously, even when he’s pushing the caricature; for example, the feelings Da-Hye has for Ki-Woo are genuine (even if it’s partly as an escape from the problems in the family; namely, her parents’ indifference to her), and you also get the sense Ki-Woo isn’t entirely pretending in what he thinks about her. Therefore, when things become violent in the last 1/3 (although never gratuitously), it comes as even more of a shock (though it’s set up). All of the actors are able to keep the characters believable the entire way (my personal favorite is So-Dam, but all of them are excellent). I don’t know if Parasite represents a turning point for Bong, or remain just the one movie of Bong’s I like, but it’s still a great film regardless.
*-Some people would also add The Lost Weekend, but since it was awarded a tie for the Palme D’Or with several other films, and since that happened for the year after it won Best Picture, I wouldn’t.