‘Parasite’ by BONG Joon Ho, Winner Cannes’ Plame d’or
Similarly to ‘Burning’ last year’s So. Korean Academy Award submission, underneath the story, which is riveting by itself, is the burning discomfort and even rage of the poor who live on the underside of urban rich societies.
This 2 hour, 12 minute story carries through strongly all the way to the end with nine characters, all of whose stories and characters are intriguing and lead you to want more.
And is the Parasite the rich or is it the poor?
Vastly different from his two previous films, the futuristic train drama Snowpiercer, and the effects-heavy Netflix eco-oddity Okja …, Parasite is almost a family drama in the vein of Kore-eda’s Shoplifters portraying a loving family living in society’s underbelly, surviving in sociopathic circumstances.
With a subtext about class warfare, similarly to Burning, if there were any equivalent to such a unique way of illustrating class warfare as it is today (a far cry from the Marxist hypothese), it might be Michael Haneke’s 1997 Funny Games, though Haneke adds a hard edge of cruelty which is reversed and much more subtle here as we get glimpses of how the upper crust treats the “help”. In Funny Games, the beautiful household is terrorized by two cruel young men who invade the home. Here, the terror is only experienced once by the little boy as if it were a ghost; only with the ending is the true violence portrayed. Until then, there seems to be a mutual affection everyone shares.
Sometimes veering toward horror, sometimes strikingly violent, yet still comedic, the characters never break stride as they take over the upkeep of the wealthy family’s needs. The music plays a strong role in setting a mood in that it telegraphs the about-to-turn wierd action these very normal seeming characters are about to take.
The university-aged son of the family who lives in a basement looking out onto a street where a drunk pisses on their window every night to their indignation is visited by his high school friend who has passed his university exams and is about to go abroad for a year’s study. The friend wants him to tutor a young woman in English and mentions that though he has failed the university entrance exam several times, his English is great and he trusts him to take care of the student whom he wants to marry when he returns and she is of age.
Ki-taek’s family of four is close, but fully unemployed, with a bleak future ahead of them. The university-aged son Ki-woo is recommended by his friend, a student at a prestigious university, for a well-paid tutoring job in English for a young woman he would like to marry when he returns from his year abroad. The friend trusts him to take care of the student for him. Spawning hopes of a regular income and carrying the expectations of all his family, Ki-woo heads to the Park family home for an interview. Arriving at the house of Mr. Park, the owner of a global IT firm, Ki-woo meets Yeon-kyo, the beautiful young lady of the house.
Watch the trailer and get a glimpse of this family’s shenanigans.
We see the pathology of the protagonist as he tutors the young woman and does not hesitate to seduce her himself. Then as the mother of the wealthy family mentions the psychological problems of her little son, our protagonist makes up a story to bring his sister in as an art therapist for the boy. The arrangement works perfectly. The sister makes a plan to discredit the chauffeur of the husband, so that she can bring in her father as his chauffeur brilliantly played by Kang-ho Song.
This is the third collaboration of actor Kang-ho Song with Joon-ho Bong after The Host and Snowpiercer . Song Kang-ho never professionally trained as an actor, beginning his career in social theater groups after graduating from Kimhae High School. Later, he joined Kee Kuk-seo’s influential theater company with its emphasis on instinctive acting and improvisation. Since his first film as an extra in The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996), he has appeared in many films, always with his sympathetic face that has a way of making the audience love him.
The next plan the family makes is to arrange that the long-time housekeeper, who actually served the previous owner of the house, the very architect who built this modern work of art, is fired so that the mother can join the rest of the family in what seems to be an ideal working arrangement for everyone. Except…”if you make a plan, life never works out that way” as the father sagely comments to the son.
All the planning that goes into the deceptions is in the end, torn asunder by the surprise visit and revelations of the former housekeeper.
And so the story takes you on a wild ride into the ridiculous, scary, funny and violent denouement — almost. But wait! There is a third part to the story and in the aftermath the audience is taken into yet another reality.
See this film. It is so good that they say it will be submitted for Best Film, not just Best Foreign Language film. Though I doubt its chances, it is not because the quality and drama is not of top quality, enough to win the Palme d’Or in Cannes itself, the first for a Korean film.
International sales agent and producer CJ Entertainment has sold the film worldwide. Neon, one of U.S.’s best domestic distributors, is releasing the film October 11, 2019.
2019 / Korean with English subtitles / 131min / Color / 2.35:1
