Parasite - Review Thread

It's a real treat to see how much foreign cinema continues to expand in both accessibility for Western audiences and also how its filmmakers continue to only get better as well. While I certainly look forward to what Hollywood and American independent cinema offers up each year, this is also the time of year when the best from around the world finds its way to American cinemas and dazzles us with these voices that are finding new ways to redefine the medium, largely unconstrained from much of the bureaucracy that plagues movies made here. One of the mainstays for almost two decades now has been South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho, who has made a name for himself with his filmography of diverse and always fun movies that have garnered him both international acclaim from critics and a serious following that's branched over into mainstream American audiences. Joon-Ho has certainly made some very strong films in his career, but his latest marks his greatest accomplishment yet, a biting social satire that would make Luis Bunuel grin with delight where a universal examination of class structure and human need come to bloody ends. It's Joon-Ho at his most mature and accomplished yet, showcasing his wonderful storytelling ability with his most layered cast of characters and themes to personify them yet. It's the front runner for the foreign film Oscar for a reason, and at this point is probably the best film of any country so far this year.

Parasite is about two families on different ends of the financial, and thus social hierarchy, spectrums. The Kims are a family living in poverty, scrambling for free wi-fi and folding pizza boxes for meager means of cash to make ends meet. Right away it's clear that the Kims are not an empathetic, downtrodden family, but rather have a whiff of sleaze and laziness that brings to mind the family of last year's Japanese hit Shoplifters but without the endearing qualities. Not to say that they're bad people, but certainly the ones who are looking to manipulate any situation to cater it to themselves that they can, which presents itself when the son, Min (Seo-soon Park), is offered by his friend to take over the English tutoring lessons to Da-Hye (Ji-so Jung), the daughter of the wealthy Park family. When Min goes to the lavish home, Da-Hye's sweet but vulnerable mother, Yeon-keo (Yeo-jeong Jo), reveals she's looking for an art tutor for her rambunctious young son. Min's mind goes to work, bringing in his sister, Ki-jung (So-dam Park), who poses as an art therapist and thus the con is set into motion. Eventually the entire Kim family find themselves employed by the Parks, with patriarch Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song) working as the personal driver to the patriarch of the Park family, Dong-ik (Sun-kyun Lee), and the matriarch, Moon-gwang (Jeong-uen Lee) replacing the steadfast housekeeper who has been with the home since before the Park family moved in. As the Kims continue to benefit from duping the Parks and feeding off their economic means, on a rainy night the old housekeeper returns, and the illusion and deceit is threatened in irreparable ways.

Parasite is a film that cleverly layers its characters with various intricacies that pit them against each other by the characters opening up to one another, revealing their vulnerabilities through false senses of security and friendship and being preyed on because of it. But it's also interesting because this isn't a typical story of the have and have nots that drub up easy empathy points where the poor family is nice and the rich family are arrogant jerks. Parasite smartly flips this, where the downtrodden Kims are the disgraceful, unapologetically selfish group and the Parks are loyal, friendly, and inviting. This is touched upon when the Kims mention how nice the Parks are for rich people, only to be retorted that they're able to be nice because they're rich. Parasite certainly contains the familiar ideas of class structure and how humans treat each other when on different levels of the societal food chain, but it also represents a case of identity crises for both families and how no matter what end you're on you're never content that you fit within a framework of anything. A poignant moment happens when a birthday party is occurring at the Park's home and Min somberly asks Da-Hye if he belongs amongst the wealthy guests inhabiting the backyard. Or how despite the Parks never overtly suspecting the Kims of their deceit never truly accept them as equal humans either, following candid, personal conversations with quick orders as their employers. It's all achieved with more subtlety than the purposely on-the-nose nastiness of Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, Viridiana, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise, and at times is more effective because of it. The movie didn't turn itself into a climax of depravity that I was expecting, and the tables aren't necessarily turned or revealed how I thought they would be either. Joon-Ho is sharp and never careens his careful crafting and plotting into final sensationalisms despite some of his trademark silliness shining through when the film takes its biggest turns, but maintains his measured approach to hammer home his thematic ideas. For a director often associated with some of his more high concept pieces like The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja, his deft handling of his material in Parasite signals an admirable maturity we haven't quite seen in his previous works. Parasite is this year's Shoplifters, a thought provoking foreign film with universal themes regarding class structure and our place in society that's balanced with clever satire and mesmerizing characters that result in it being the must-see film that 2019 has offered.

9/10

You posted your review in the Coming Soon thread.

Parasite(10/25/2019)
Bong Joon-Ho has, over the course of the last two decades, become a pretty major voice in world cinema whose reputation seems to grow with each film he puts out… and I’m not the biggest fan. Among modern Korean auteurs I much prefer Park Chan-Wook and Lee Chang-dong. Joon-Ho instead reminds me a bit of Guillermo del Toro in that I think he’s a cool guy and I like what he represents for cinema and he seldom makes a movie I outright dislike but I’ve found him uneven in his output and think that even the best of his films come up a little short of greatness for me. I kind of hated his last movie, Okja, which was a muddle of bad CGI and weird over-the-top acting. I did enjoy his previous effort Snowpiercer a bit more but I still found it a bit silly in places and The Host never really did much for me either. All three of those movies seemed to get an inordinate amount for general wackiness combined with a dose of sophomoric on-the-nose political metaphors. In general I’ve preferred the director more when he steps away from overt genre cinema to make more character oriented thrillers like his breakthrough film Memories of Murder or his 2009 film Mother, but even those movies only did so much for me. Still there’s a reason why I’ve kept watching these movies and given that his latest movie, Parasite, has been widely acclaimed and looked a lot more like the Joon-Ho movies I’ve preferred I was still pretty excited to see it.

The film focuses in on a lower class family in Seoul who live in a dingy garden level apartment and getting by on various scams and grifts. Things start to look up for the family’s college-aged son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) when one of his more wealthy friends tips him off about a job he might be good for. The job involves tutoring an extremely wealthy family’s high school daughter and while Ki-woo isn’t actually a college student his friend knows that the mother in the rich family (Cho Yeo-jeong) is really gullible and will be fooled if Ki-Woo’s sister Ki-jeong (Park So-dam) forges some fake credentials. Once there he sees that this family will indeed be easy to grift and hatches a scheme to have his sister pose as a tutor for their younger son and after that works they conspire to have the family’s driver and maid fired and then replaced with their father (Song Kang-ho) and mother (Jang Hye-jin). So they’ve infiltrated the family and are living on them parasitically if you will, but soon the fallout of their actions will catch up with them in unexpected ways that will have life altering consequences for all involved.

So, as you read that summery the question whether or not we’re really supposed to be on the side of this family given that they are plainly committing fraud and don’t seem terribly guilty about disrupting other people’s lives to get what they want, and the answer to that is complicated. The short version is that these grifters are just generally more likable people despite their rather amoral actions than their wealthy victims, but the movie finds very interesting ways to set up this dynamic. For one thing, it very carefully avoids painting the rich family as being actively malicious in its behavior and doesn’t treat them as being devoid of virtue. They seem to genuinely have love and affection for their children and they don’t intentionally mistreat their employees to their face. Rather their great sin is that they just have kind of a shitty attitude about people. They speak with incredible condescension about their employees when they aren’t listening and while the grifters did conspire to screw over some of the previous domestic workers at the house their plans only worked because they knew the wealthy family would be selfish and uncaring enough to judge and dispose of them the second they became inconvenient. Meanwhile, the family of grifters have a certain salt of the earth charm through most of the movie and while the movie never excuses them for their crimes it does show that they were motivated by legitimate need and seemed like relatively victimless crimes when they set out to do them.

This element of class warfare is embedded in Parasite but does not entirely define it. This is not an “issue” movie, at least not on the surface. In a way it’s trying to do the same thing that Snowpiercer was doing, comment on wealth inequality within the context of an entertaining film, except this one is more entertaining and isn’t making its point through a blunt as hell metaphor. You don’t, however, need to really care that much about the issues of class at the center of the film to enjoy it. Aside from the fact that it’s not in English and that it gets kind of crazy toward the end this is actually made with some clear commercial sensibilities and will be quite accessible to most audiences. In that sense I’m almost kind of surprised that it’s managed to be so widely loved by institutions like Cannes who generally tend to reward more formally unconventional fare. But that is in some ways the film’s great strength, it knows exactly what compromises to make in order to work for both highbrow and lowbrow audience and it achieves a movie that is going to be very widely enjoyed for what it is.
****1/2 out of Five

I just really thought it was slow and plodding for the eventual climax. I didn't hate it but it didn't leave me wow'ed the way I expected it to. And some tropes of specifically Asian cinema really get on my nerves and they hit most of them. Good ending though - been a trend of whimper endings for movies for me.

7.5/10

It was good.

Were you expecting.....actual parasites?

I think that's the film's great strength. Too often in all forms of storytelling, it's easy to do the "wholesome poor people who see what matters in life vs. the dubious rich people who have lost their ways" storylines, but Parasite smartly avoids this.

I like Parasite, but I agree it’s overrated. It reminds me of 2000’s movies like One Hour Photo and The Machinist in its tone, style and concept. If it had been an American film, people would have watched it, enjoyed it and then promptly forgotten about it. But I know you’re a big fan of 2000’s cinema so I can see why you love it.