Parasite (Gisaengchung) (2019)
Rated R for language, some violence and sexual content
Score: 5 out of 5
As somebody who has long been disappointed at how the Academy Awards always seem to reward milquetoast "respectability" in a quest to remain "relevant" with a version of America that hasn't really existed in a meaningful sense outside the upper-middle-class suburbs since the '80s, it was a shock to see Parasite, a deeply class-conscious film that pulls no punches in its depiction of the divide between the rich and the poor, win the Oscar for Best Picture -- the first film in a language other than English to do so. As a fan of good movies, on the other hand, I have absolutely no complaints, because Parasite is one of the best movies of 2019. I've been a fan of Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho ever since Snowpiercer, one of the more creative sci-fi dystopias of the last decade and a great action movie on top of it, and here, he turns his gaze to the real world without any fantastical flourishes; while it's set in South Korea, one could picture a story like it taking place in any wealthy country with stark economic disparities. Its story is laced with "slobs vs. snobs" comedy that often had me laughing my ass off, demonstrating that smart, witty writing can, in fact, cross language and cultural boundaries, all of it in the service of a story that leaves no easy answers with regards to the conflict between its two sets of central characters. Parasite is a dark, hilarious movie that will stick with you for a while after you've seen it; the Academy made a great call in honoring it the way they did.
The ostensible "protagonists" -- or villains, depending on how you see them -- are the Kims, a dirt-poor family barely scraping by in the slums working menial jobs and putting up with loutish neighbors. When the teenage son Ki-woo manages to scam his way into a job as an English tutor for a wealthy teenage girl named Park Da-hye, he gets an idea to get his family out of the hole (literally; they live in a sub-basement apartment) that they're stuck in: namely, get them working as the Parks' well-paid domestic servants. Through a chain of increasingly outlandish lies, the daughter Ki-jeong is hired as an "art therapist" for the Parks' rambunctious young son Da-song, the father Ki-taek is hired as a chauffeur after the Parks' previous driver (thanks to Ki-jeong's machinations) is suspected of using their car to pick up loose women, and the mother Chung-sook replaces their old housekeeper Moon-gwang after Ki-taek tricks the Parks into thinking that she has tuberculosis, the Parks none the wiser that "the help" is actually a family out to get rich off of them. Complications soon arise, however, when Moon-gwang suddenly returns to the house while the Parks are away on vacation, asking to retrieve something from the basement...
At its core, this is a caper about criminals who are too clever by half, thinking that they've scored the ultimate grift that has them set for life with a ticket out of the 'hood. Just one of them landing a steady job as an English tutor would've made them plenty of money, but each of them gets the idea to push it just a little bit further for the sake of a bigger payday. That said, when we see their living conditions at the beginning of the film, it's hard to fault them for developing eyes bigger than their belly once they see the Parks' immaculately-kept mansion. They open the windows in their apartment when the streets are being fumigated because they can't afford an exterminator, they rely on the WiFi signals of their neighbors because they can't afford cellular or internet bills, and their poverty keeps them from developing the skills and getting the certifications they might need to get out of poverty in the first place, at least through legal means. Given that their efforts to make money legally are going nowhere, it's no wonder that Ki-woo decides that he's gonna fake it 'til he makes it, and that the rest of the family gets the same idea. The kicker is that, even though they conned their way into their jobs as the Parks' servants, they're not shown to be particularly bad at these jobs. Ki-woo seems to know enough English to be an effective tutor for Da-hye and soon starts falling for her, Ki-jeong correctly surmises that Da-song has legitimate mental problems owing to some kind of trauma (exactly what that is, we find out later), Ki-taek turns out to be a pretty good driver once he figures out all the bells and whistles on the Mercedes, and Chung-sook can cook a damn fine stir-fry in a jiffy even though she's just learned the recipe. It's strongly implied that this family would be rich if only they'd gotten the opportunities to develop their talents and make an honest living, and that it was their poverty that produced their moral failings and con artistry, not the other way around.
The nuance goes both ways, too, as the Parks likewise aren't as evil as they easily could've been. The father is a rich, haughty asshole, the mother is a walking Karen stereotype, and the kids are nice enough but are definitely spoiled and liable to grow up to be just like their parents, but while they may be condescending and dismissive towards those beneath them on the social ladder, they are never shown to be outwardly malicious. Paternalistic and rude, absolutely, but they themselves are shown to be utterly miserable; the father Dong-ik is extremely vain and superficial in how he looks down on the servants because they "smell", the mother Yeon-gyo is an airhead, submissive to a fault, and implied to be using drugs, the two of them are trapped in a loveless marriage, and Da-song has some sort of mental difficulty that his parents can't seem to figure out. In the hands of a different writer, this could've easily turned into a Korean remake of The People Under the Stairs, with the Kims finding out that the Parks are up to some weird shit in the basement. But Bong's writing isn't that simple. In the fight between the Kims, the Parks, and later Moon-gwang, neither is necessarily the bad guy; sure, one side is more sympathetic than the other, but you don't necessarily want any of these characters to suffer. The real enemy is the system they all live under, trapping the Kims and Moon-gwang in a cycle of poverty and fighting each other for scraps that they can only escape through criminal means while giving the Parks every reason to retreat into an isolated slice of paradise where the problems of the real world don't affect them, caring more about appearances than about substance.
All of this comes wrapped in a thriller plot filled with twists and turns as the Kims constantly try to keep their scam going. Bong has always had a knack for dark humor, and here, I often couldn't help but laugh at the audacity of some of the Kims' schemes. You just know that they can't do this forever, and that they're eventually going to get caught; what you can't predict is just how that is going to happen, the exact thread that is going to unravel everything. Through close call after close call, I found myself with a gigantic evil grin on my face as the Kims always managed to stay one step ahead through sheer gumption, even as things are slowly going to hell behind the scenes. While the language barrier did make it harder to read some of the nuances of the actors' performances (perhaps the reason why, unlike the script, Bong's direction, and the film itself, none of them got nominated for Oscars), I was still able to recognize that they were all outstanding, giving me ample reason to both love and hate them in varying measures. And despite being over two hours long, the film was always moving, never feeling like it was dawdling around waiting to get to the point, in no small part thanks to ironclad editing that gave every scheme of the Kims a perfect rhythm before flowing right into the next. The manner in which the Kims' and Parks' homes were shot emphasized how far apart their worlds were without feeling like exaggerated caricatures of either extreme wealth or extreme poverty; all around, this was a world that served its characters well, filling the Kims' lives with misfortune while the Parks barely felt like they lived in a city at all.
The ostensible "protagonists" -- or villains, depending on how you see them -- are the Kims, a dirt-poor family barely scraping by in the slums working menial jobs and putting up with loutish neighbors. When the teenage son Ki-woo manages to scam his way into a job as an English tutor for a wealthy teenage girl named Park Da-hye, he gets an idea to get his family out of the hole (literally; they live in a sub-basement apartment) that they're stuck in: namely, get them working as the Parks' well-paid domestic servants. Through a chain of increasingly outlandish lies, the daughter Ki-jeong is hired as an "art therapist" for the Parks' rambunctious young son Da-song, the father Ki-taek is hired as a chauffeur after the Parks' previous driver (thanks to Ki-jeong's machinations) is suspected of using their car to pick up loose women, and the mother Chung-sook replaces their old housekeeper Moon-gwang after Ki-taek tricks the Parks into thinking that she has tuberculosis, the Parks none the wiser that "the help" is actually a family out to get rich off of them. Complications soon arise, however, when Moon-gwang suddenly returns to the house while the Parks are away on vacation, asking to retrieve something from the basement...
At its core, this is a caper about criminals who are too clever by half, thinking that they've scored the ultimate grift that has them set for life with a ticket out of the 'hood. Just one of them landing a steady job as an English tutor would've made them plenty of money, but each of them gets the idea to push it just a little bit further for the sake of a bigger payday. That said, when we see their living conditions at the beginning of the film, it's hard to fault them for developing eyes bigger than their belly once they see the Parks' immaculately-kept mansion. They open the windows in their apartment when the streets are being fumigated because they can't afford an exterminator, they rely on the WiFi signals of their neighbors because they can't afford cellular or internet bills, and their poverty keeps them from developing the skills and getting the certifications they might need to get out of poverty in the first place, at least through legal means. Given that their efforts to make money legally are going nowhere, it's no wonder that Ki-woo decides that he's gonna fake it 'til he makes it, and that the rest of the family gets the same idea. The kicker is that, even though they conned their way into their jobs as the Parks' servants, they're not shown to be particularly bad at these jobs. Ki-woo seems to know enough English to be an effective tutor for Da-hye and soon starts falling for her, Ki-jeong correctly surmises that Da-song has legitimate mental problems owing to some kind of trauma (exactly what that is, we find out later), Ki-taek turns out to be a pretty good driver once he figures out all the bells and whistles on the Mercedes, and Chung-sook can cook a damn fine stir-fry in a jiffy even though she's just learned the recipe. It's strongly implied that this family would be rich if only they'd gotten the opportunities to develop their talents and make an honest living, and that it was their poverty that produced their moral failings and con artistry, not the other way around.
The nuance goes both ways, too, as the Parks likewise aren't as evil as they easily could've been. The father is a rich, haughty asshole, the mother is a walking Karen stereotype, and the kids are nice enough but are definitely spoiled and liable to grow up to be just like their parents, but while they may be condescending and dismissive towards those beneath them on the social ladder, they are never shown to be outwardly malicious. Paternalistic and rude, absolutely, but they themselves are shown to be utterly miserable; the father Dong-ik is extremely vain and superficial in how he looks down on the servants because they "smell", the mother Yeon-gyo is an airhead, submissive to a fault, and implied to be using drugs, the two of them are trapped in a loveless marriage, and Da-song has some sort of mental difficulty that his parents can't seem to figure out. In the hands of a different writer, this could've easily turned into a Korean remake of The People Under the Stairs, with the Kims finding out that the Parks are up to some weird shit in the basement. But Bong's writing isn't that simple. In the fight between the Kims, the Parks, and later Moon-gwang, neither is necessarily the bad guy; sure, one side is more sympathetic than the other, but you don't necessarily want any of these characters to suffer. The real enemy is the system they all live under, trapping the Kims and Moon-gwang in a cycle of poverty and fighting each other for scraps that they can only escape through criminal means while giving the Parks every reason to retreat into an isolated slice of paradise where the problems of the real world don't affect them, caring more about appearances than about substance.
All of this comes wrapped in a thriller plot filled with twists and turns as the Kims constantly try to keep their scam going. Bong has always had a knack for dark humor, and here, I often couldn't help but laugh at the audacity of some of the Kims' schemes. You just know that they can't do this forever, and that they're eventually going to get caught; what you can't predict is just how that is going to happen, the exact thread that is going to unravel everything. Through close call after close call, I found myself with a gigantic evil grin on my face as the Kims always managed to stay one step ahead through sheer gumption, even as things are slowly going to hell behind the scenes. While the language barrier did make it harder to read some of the nuances of the actors' performances (perhaps the reason why, unlike the script, Bong's direction, and the film itself, none of them got nominated for Oscars), I was still able to recognize that they were all outstanding, giving me ample reason to both love and hate them in varying measures. And despite being over two hours long, the film was always moving, never feeling like it was dawdling around waiting to get to the point, in no small part thanks to ironclad editing that gave every scheme of the Kims a perfect rhythm before flowing right into the next. The manner in which the Kims' and Parks' homes were shot emphasized how far apart their worlds were without feeling like exaggerated caricatures of either extreme wealth or extreme poverty; all around, this was a world that served its characters well, filling the Kims' lives with misfortune while the Parks barely felt like they lived in a city at all.
The Bottom Line
A deserving Best Picture winner if ever there was one, Parasite is one of my favorite films of last year, a daring and wickedly funny crime thriller with a lot on its mind and the finesse to put all those thoughts into words. Unless you're the kind of person who absolutely will not watch a film that has subtitles (speaking of, hey Mom!), check this out.
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