Parasite Is A Thriller For The History Books
The Bong Joon-ho train continues to run its engine at full capacity in what may be the filmmaker's best movie and one of the best pictures this year. Parasite" is a thriller that doesn't contain a singular moment that trudges along in redundancy or needless exposition. BJH is a master of structure. He knows how to captivate an audience without sucking away their oxygen. Every scene plays like a large montage from an opera on stimulants. It's a film that has no good or bad guys — only questions relating to our very sinful essence when it comes to our economic survival.
Kim Ki-Woo (Woo-sik Choi) lives in a windowless single bathroom studio garden unit with his dad Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song) mom Chung-sook (Hye-jin Jang) and sister Ki-jung (So-dam Park) Together the family is canned like sardines. Any activity that the family is doing can be seen from miles, as privacy is not an option. For money, the family packs pizza boxes. That's it. Pizza box packing is their means of getting by. Upon a visit from Ki-Woo's friend Min-hyuk (Seo-joon Park), Min gives Ki the suggestion to pose as an English instructor from his university for Da-hye (Ji-so Jung). Da-hye belongs to the prestigious Park family who occupies themselves in a mansion that the Kim's could only dream of having. Upon successfully fooling everyone that he's an accredited English student, Ki-woo integrates his entire family within the Park household. Dad is the limo driver; sister is the art psychology major for the family's troubled youngster Da-sung (Hyun-jun Jung), and mom becomes the new housekeeper by poisoning the current one. Through their elaborate deceitful con, the Kim family lives the high life under a roof that was never there's in the first place.
As you could guess, this good fortune isn't too last. Repercussions are imminent. When the chain reaction ignites the chips gloriously fall in unexpected places, that can sink the picture with how over the top it gets but knows how to balance its reality amongst such lunacy. What begins as a South Korean version of American Hustle dissolves into a chaotic bloodbath dealing with the undertones of economic inequality.
Bong-Joon-ho avoids pointing fingers at who's in the wrong. In the end, we are all in the wrong. The Park family, although polite to their workers, view them as smelly peasants after all. They're immediately replaceable; thus, anyone employed under them should walk on eggshells not to offend the Parks in any sort of way. For the Kim family, they're lying thieves yet what choice do they have? Work hard until you succeed? Great. In the meantime, there's still plenty of time to continue to pack pizza boxes while being treated like dirt. Do you continue to play by the rules of the system hoping for a brighter future when you know in your heart of hearts that, in fact, that future may never exist? How many success stories have we read about because someone didn't play nice? Far too many right? We do what we must to survive. Society doesn't care about you unless you can impress it. That's the truth. The theme of fighting for what's right for your family is universal. We want to do what is right for those that we love, but at what cost? When the Kim's reached their pinnacle of euphoria living like royalty under the roof of other's success, they became drunk with greed, much like the Parks have. Greed, much like Charles Foster Kane or Gordon Gecko, is what leads to one's downfall.
There aren't many directors who can handle tone the way Bong-Joon-ho can. He's a mixture of Hitchcock, John Woo, and Wes Craven. Such extremities in style could be adverse in a picture, yet his movies always know what they want to say. The recurring theme of classism in Bong's other works is the most prominent as villains aren't negatively painted, nor is any character a cardboard cutout one-note entity. "Parasite" will be a film that will be discussed at parties, examined, re-examined, and over examined for years to come. When the credits roll, you'll want to rerun the film, looking for all the clues, finding out some more about each of its characters, admiring the stunning set design from the house that was ACTUALLY BUILT, basking in the seamless editing, the smooth cinematography, all of it. "Parasite" is a masterclass in tension we should collectively attend.
**** out of ****
