The title parasite which apparently in its original has more of an insect bug element to it but in the movie, it is ambiguous – who is actually the parasite?
Is it society? Is it one family feeding another? What is the parasitic relationship? Are the rich bad or the poor good? It has been deliberately kept ambiguous all the way through. Director Bong Jonn-Ho has left it all on the viewers and you can’t tell who was good and who was bad so when the film ends, you feel weird and bitter.
It’s the most terrifying non-horror movie you will ever watch. Nothing is more terrifying than “Humans gone wrong”.
This tale of two families, one living very high up in a glass spacious beautifully designed building and the other, living in a small tiny semi basement, is more Shakespearen than Hitchcockian. Like Shakespear it encompasses tragedy, comedy, romance, history, and mystery of the world.
In 2019, “Parasite,” an Oscar-winning movie from Bong Joon-ho, made cinematic history. It was the first non-English language film to win both the Academy Prize for Best Picture, as well as the first South Korean film to win the coveted Palme D’Or. It deserves all of the acclaim it received! Today, we are revisiting Parasite, one of the most riveting films in a while.
It is a film which has multiple layers in it narratively and geographically. The film was so brilliant that every time you will sit analyzing it, each analysis will add something new to its interpretation.
The hidden elements inside the film’s fabric make it a great montage. Its technical execution was so precise and immaculate that it was hard to notice the greatest achievement hiding underneath in ‘the screenplay’.
The ensemble film cast was pretty much across the board and pitch perfect. In the parasite “House”, that becomes the character itself is the key element. While other movies only consider their setting as a prop stage where it’s only a place for their actors to perform, Parasite makes its setting another character.
The movie basically is about a low income unemployed family of Kim who takes interest in the lifestyle of the affluent and glitzy parks and eventually gets entangled in a catastrophe.
The movie shows Kims, living on the edge of poverty. They fold pizza boxes for a delivery company to make their ends meet. Their lives are changed when his son Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) accepts a friend’s offer to be set up as an English tutor for the daughter of a wealthy Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun). Kim Ki-woo failed his university examinations, so he lacks a college degree. However, using her excellent photo-shopping skills, his sister Kim Ki-jeong (Park So-dam) offers a simple solution to that. With a fake degree in hand, Kim enters Park’s house with a changed name Kavin and easily wins over Mr.wife, Park’s and their adolescent daughter, Park Da-hye (Jung ji-so).
Kavin, though, has much bigger plans. While keeping one foot firmly inside the Park household, Kim Ki-jeong (Kavin-the new name) deftly places his sister as Da-song’s art teacher and therapist. Park family also have Park Da-song (Jung Hyeong), their nine-year-old son, who Mrs. Park thinks has untapped artistic potential. Thanks to Mrs. Park’s naive and trusting attitude that his sister’s inclusion in Park’s family was quite seamless.
Soon Kim Ki-parents, Jeong’s Kim Ki-taek and Chung sook (Chang Hyae-jin) are employed as a house help and driver in the house with their careful scheming, fake identities and a well-rehearsed plan.
With the Kim family settling into their new roles in the Park family’s luxurious, sun-drenched mansion serving as the perfect backdrop, it appears like a flawless plan.
But, gradually, the prevalent class warfare and social disparity are brought to the fore through carefully plotted sequence of events. The director’s screenplay will surprise you with unexpected plot turns and a suspenseful buildup to a grisly but stunning climax.
The movie ends absolutely bleak leaving a lot of things unanswered; yet packed with a message that there are no winners in this system, there will always be someone richer, someone poorer and someone waiting to take the place of another.
