Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Bong Joon-Ho
Story by: Bong Joon Ho
Screenplay by: Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won
Produced by: Kwak Sin Ae, Moon Yang Kwon
Executive Producer: Miky Lee
Starring: SONG Kang Ho, LEE Sun Kyun, CHO Yeo Jeong, CHOI Woo Shik, PARK So Dam, CHANG Hyae Jin, JUNG ZISO, JUNG Hyeon Jun, LEE Jung Eun.
Winner d’Or Cannes Film Festival
Official Competition Sydney Film Festival
Director and writer Bong Joon-Ho describes Parasite as, ‘a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.’
And Joon-Ho has certainly captured a film with a difference here, where the story starts off one way, then evolves into something else so the film’s like a journey into a way of thinking or a thought that creeps up.
Parasite starts off about a struggling family, living in a sub-basement where they contemplate putting up a sign, ‘No urinating’ because of the drunk that is forever pissing outside their window.
The father, Ki-Taek (Song, Kang Ho) has no job after several failed business ventures; the mother, Chung-Sook (Chang Hyae Jin) is a former national medallist in the hammer throw who keeps house as best she can amongst the stink beetles and cardboard pizza boxes the family assemble to at least have some money coming in.
Getting cut-off from the wi-fi because the neighbour has changed their password, son, Ki-Woo (Choi Woo Shik) and daughter, Ki-Jung (Park So Dam) wave their phones around, trying to find a connection, waving past a fan cover with socks hanging, eventually finding connection up on the raised toilet.
It’s desperate times, but the family struggles together.
Until Ki-Woo gets an opportunity to tutor a rich kid.
Posing as a college graduate, Ki-Woo burrows into the life of the Park family, also a family of four, with Mr. Park (Lee Sun Kyun) CEO of a global IT firm and young wife Yeon-Kyo (Cho Yeo Jeong) who stays at home with their two young children.
Ki-Woo plans and manipulates this rich family to keep his family together – to get them jobs as well, despite the fact all the positions are already filled. And it’s easy. The family are so nice. But they can be nice. They’re rich.
There’s so much more to this film than the concept of the haves and have-nots. Yet, this is the central idea shown with symbolism like flood water running down steps – from the beauty and green grass and clean lines of a house built by an architect to catch the sun, running down to the squalor of the streets below, flooded with raw sewage.
There’s a line – Mr. Park even stating, ‘I can’t stand people who cross the line’ – and as the film progresses the more stark the difference between those above and those below.
I can see why this film is winning awards. There’s so much thought and layering in the story, carefully unveiled.
From light humour capturing how families are, to the horror of a class divide that keeps getting deeper shown with the revelation of ignorance and the fight to protect family; the individual fights against circumstance until the eventual learned behaviour: with no plan, nothing can go wrong.
The portrayal of what feels like a true-to-life tragedy is made to feel authentic because of the lightness and brevity of the family on the edge of starvation; the desperation turning relatable, intelligent people into something else.
Like the film is saying: it’s not like people who are desperate don’t know they’re desperate.
So there’s more than the class divide growing wider and the actions the desperate make trying to survive, there’s self-reflection.