How Metaphorical
One of the essential lines in Parasite is “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan”. The same goes for the movie because ideally, you don’t know anything about it before surrendering yourself to Bong Joon-Ho’s masterpiece. So if you have not seen it yet, maybe you should close this window and find a way to watch it. I promise you, it will be more than likely that you’ll instantly want to watch it again, once the credits start rolling.
Over the years, Bong Joon-Ho has created a kind of signature genre on his own by subverting the expectations of how a movie “has to be” while mastering technical aspects of filmmaking and telling surprising, profound stories. The man himself is a bonafide legend, too. For example, in a recent interview with Variety, he said that he could never shoot a Marvel movie because he “can’t stand people wearing tight-fitting clothes. I’ll never wear something like that, and just seeing someone in tight clothes is mentally difficult. I don’t know where to look, and I feel suffocated.” Bong Joon-Ho has his own mind, speaks it, and lucky for the audience, shares it on screen. He is one of the very few directors who manage to switch from dark moments of shock and horror to comic relief and vice versa within the same scene. He has a sharp eye for interpersonal relationships and social dynamics as well as the hypocrisy of affluent societies. His films are uncompromising and consistently thought out till the last step. They are sometimes surreal and full of captivating plot developments which - as surprising as they may be - always feel realistic and plausible. In Parasite, all these characterizing notes come to full fruition.
Ki-Woo Kim, son of a lower-class “mainly unemployed” family, is presented with the chance to work as an English tutor for the daughter of a rich upper-class family albeit having any real qualification or credentials. From this seed of opportunity blossoms a carnivorous plant with the Kim family realizing their full potential as a family of con-artists infiltrating the Park’s home. A subversive class-war over status, wealth, and power ensues.
I would say it is as flawless as a movie can be. Flawless acting, flawless writing, and flawless camerawork with the “every frame a painting” seal. With no fat, no redundant scenes, all sequences are composed together beautifully like a multiple course dinner with one delicious plate after another. There are hilarious dialogues, clever reveals and scenes so perfectly paced that they build suspense as if Alfred Hitchcock rose from the dead to work his magic with a contemporary update in 2019. Like the Kim family fools the Park family, Bong Joon-Ho fools the audience and still manages to keep on surprising you even though you became already very suspicious after a certain turning point.
““There’s a war goin’ on outside no man is safe from.””
Parasite masterfully illustrates the imbalance of power between rich and poor in the world we live in today. It shows that in this seemingly peaceful society, there still is a struggle for survival going on for some - in this case not really “fake it ‘til you make it”, more like “fake it ‘til you take it”. For Bong Joon-Ho the contrast between rich and poor is a “very natural” subject to talk about in this day and age because of its omnipresent visibility. With this movie, he makes these inequities stand out without necessarily picking sides or being too in-your-face about it. All characters are born into their respective situations and thus are inherently a part of this system. In a way, they simply play their part. While the Kim family sees the Park family as a rare opportunity to escape their precarious lives, the Parks are seemingly unaware of the human struggles of their employees. What might feel disrespectful or even violently dehumanizing from the audience’s perspective, feels normal for the Parks. For them, it is obvious that those people have the single purpose of serving them. They are not the same, not equal. Mr. Park always insists on his employees “knowing and never crossing the line”. This border is not only represented in power dynamics, but also in physical space. The Kim family is literally climbing up a mountain to the comfortable ivory tower of the upper-class and having to go back down to their life in poverty after their shifts. No to mention what is seething under the Park’s house unbeknownst to them because they never bother “looking down” - not in the basement, not under the coffee table. A monsoon-like rainstorm is an amusing natural spectacle for the Parks with their only worry that their son’s tent might not be completely waterproof. For the Kims, the storm means they have to run back down the mountain to their neighborhood through the rain only to find their semi-basement apartment being completely flooded and destroyed.
There are no heroes in Parasite. You might root for the underdogs - until they do something that crosses your moral line. Even though you can understand why they do it and why they do it so ruthlessly, it is difficult to fully support it. You have empathy and sympathy for the Kim’s predicaments. The Park family seem very polite on the surface, but there is always the power dynamic and inequality vibing through in their interactions with staff. On one occasion Mrs. Kim jokes “If I had this much money, I would be a whole lot nicer, too”. Therefore you can’t help but despise the arrogant upper-class parents who - maybe not even maliciously - treat their staff like inferior human beings. But does that mean they deserve that? Your moral compass will have to do a lot of recalibrating during this movie. No character is blatantly evil but nobody is innocent either. The inescapable escalation creates no winners, just losers.
Not to get too high-brow for a second here, but the question who or what really is the parasite in this scenario is very interesting. Everybody might answer it differently. Maybe the parasite is not one of the characters, but they could rather be the hosts for the parasite of an extremely capitalist, classist society that leads them to their inevitable “survival of the fittest” trajectories. Maybe poverty is the indestructible parasite leaving certain people with no choice but trying to exploit every opportunity for an exit strategy they get. In the case of the Kims, their cleverness and recklessness were not enough. Maybe empathy is the cure.
I don’t know. But I definitely still wonder.
Sources:
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/parasite-bong-joon-ho-success-next-movies-marvel-netflix-1203408123/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP-eqx2X9AY
Thumbnail image: Parasite Still
Source: A Reel of One’s Own
