After a surprise sweep at the Oscars – four trophies including the first Best Picture not in English and the first South Korean winner for International Film – Parasite’s UK release already comes surrounded by considerable hype. I very purposely avoided knowing as much as possible about the film before sitting down to see it, hoping to experience the surprises I was told it contained as authentically as possible. By the end of the film, I left the theatre with my hands trembling, so tense and full of adrenaline that I couldn’t shake the rush the film gave me for hours after.
A genre-defying masterpiece, Parasite moves seamlessly between heist movie, comic farce, thriller, horror, and Shakespearian tragedy. The film begins with the struggling Kim family in their semi-basement Seoul apartment, huddling into the bathroom to pick up their neighbour’s WiFi and folding hundreds of cardboard pizza boxes for a pittance wage. When the son, Ki-woo, (played by Choi Woo-shik) is offered a job tutoring English to a wealthy family’s daughter he jumps at the chance, forging a degree from a prestigious college to secure a job working for the rich Park family.
Much more visually restrained than Bong’s recent works – his last two films, Snowpiercer and Okja, were high-concept sci-fi with startlingly imaginative design – the focus of Parasite is the Park’s enormous, glossy architectural wonder of a house. With its minimalist design, all polished woods, chrome surfaces and angular shapes, it’s open spaces emphasise the cold, immaculate cleanliness of twenty-first century wealth. The sleekness of the Park’s and their home, their expensive cars and enormous, neutral-toned wardrobes, highlight the Kim’s discomfort and sense of unbelonging in this world of abundance – Mr. Park remarks sniffily to his wife that they ‘smell of people who take the subway.’
The cast give extraordinary performances across the board, particularly Song Kang-ho as the Kim family patriarch, his statesmanlike countenance the centre of every moment of comedy or tragedy in which he appears. Indeed, in a film so widely lauded throughout the western awards season, the lack of acting nominations for any of the cast feels like something of a slight.
What feels really extraordinary about Parasite, however, is it’s narrative, which manages to be utterly thrilling, sharp, and tragic while neither valorizing nor demonizing any of its characters. Described by Bong as “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains”, the Park family’s cruelties ultimately stem not from malice but from the oblivious comfort of their wealth, while the Kim family are deeply empathetic but made selfish by their desperation. In a film whose climax swings into pure horror, the evil pulling events into disarray emanates not from a single character but from the political system in which they live, the cruelty of capitalism palpable in every strand of narrative.
Biting, imaginative and deeply original, Parasite is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. A perfectly crafted, constantly weaving maze of a film, it puts no foot wrong, and its status as international phenomenon could not be more richly deserved.
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Writers: Bong Joon Ho (story), Bong Joon Ho (screenplay)
Stars: Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo
- Parasite (2019) - 13th February 2020