How do you start writing about Parasite? Do you begin with the adroit approach to hard-hitting themes of privilege, class warfare, and socioeconomic inequality? The movie’s unpredictablility and furious pace, such that you can’t take your eyes off the screen even for a second? Is it the beautiful cinematography, the way each dazzling shot is lit, the camera movements, the magnificent long takes and dynamic overhead shots? The way Bong Joon-ho, an acclaimed filmmaker at the very height of his powers, deftly weaves in the very best elements from his past films into a genrebending masterpiece: part heist film, part dark comedy, and thriller/horror? Or maybe it’s the way the film stays with you, burrowing itself into your mind?
There is such a striking physicality and dimensionality in Parasite. Not since Panic Room has a movie demonstrated such a sense of space and layout for a house. While Bong’s previous movie Snowpiercer was a completely horizontal movie, Parasite, like Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us, has such a looming verticality to it1. Bong also calls these concepts “hallway” versus “stairway” movies, with another prime example of a stairway movie being Kim Ki-young’s classic The Housemaid, which Bong acknowledged as a great influence on this movie. In Parasite, each family is stationed somewhere on the ladder – the affluent Park family in their mansion, the old housekeeper and her husband in the underground bunker, and the Kims stuck somewhere in between in their semi basement apartment.
The physical symbolism of being trapped between two worlds, scraping by while looking up and striving for more, is startling. Even the raining/flooding scene is powerful: we watch as the water flows down, along their feet, as the Kims rush home downhill. I grew up in Jakarta, where floods hit hard and often, but the wealthy have always lived on high ground and were relatively unaffected, whereas for the poor it becomes a matter of life and death. For the Park family, the heavy rain is an annoyance as they have to cancel their birthday camping trip, but the Kims are wiped out and temporarily homeless. They’re figurative sewage – floating around underground in filth and ignored by the rest of better-off society.
The claustrophobia and sense of tight proximity of the Kim family in the semi basement filled with stuff is a marked contrast against the sprawling, cavernous, and minimalist spaces of the Parks’ house. You can see and feel, and almost smell the difference. Smell plays a big role in this film: it’s the physical manifestation of the class divide and the disgusted attitude of the wealthy towards the underprivileged. From the stinkbugs in the very beginning, to the talk of the “subway stench”, Parasite is engaging on all five senses, which makes it is as visceral and emotional as it is intellectual.
The set design is something else too, and Bong’s obsession with the details of every set and every frame (he famously doesn’t shoot any coverage) adds to the exquisite beauty of the film. In order to shoot the flooding scene, for example, he constructed the Kims’ semi basement apartment in a water tank, just so that on the last day of shooting he could flood the entire place.
The theme of crossing the line is also a really interesting one, and another example of the physical symbolism that Bong displays. These lines are evident in the way that Bong composes his shots, reminiscent of the all-time greats. To Mr. Park, not crossing the line means knowing one’s place, and the Kims come closer and closer to crossing the line until finally do. The build-up, the tension, of inching towards this line, permeates the film, but the moment the Kims cross the Rubicon is clear. “Kevin” and “Jessica” get their jobs by deceiving the “simple-minded” Mrs. Park, but getting their parents to work at the Park household causes others to lose their livelihood. Displacing the housekeeper ends up being what irrevocably sets off the whole wild chain of events in the basement. Where Us blurs the lines of class stratification, Bong sharpens and intensifies this divide over the course of the film.
That’s not to say that Parasite is in any way dull, pretentious, or preachy; on the contrary, it’s a wildly entertaining roller coaster ride. The ketchup trick, the drunk pissing scene – I’ve seen glimpses in his previous films, but had no idea that Bong could be so funny. The first act is more of a comedy/heist in the vein of Miss Doubtfire more than anything else. When the film abruptly shifts tones and takes a Hitchcockian turn, Bong changes gears as seamlessly as Ansel Elgort in Baby Driver. Once the old housekeeper shows up again at the doorstep and her husband in the basement is revealed, you realize that there are actually three levels to the story and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Then, Bong uses a succession of false Chekhov’s guns to ratchet up the tension to almost unbearable levels, especially while the Kims are scrambling to hide after the camping trip is aborted.
The acting is also exceptional throughout, and it was frustrating that none of the actors were recognized by the Academy. The standout performance of the movie has to be Park So-dam as Kim Kim-jung/Jessica. She doesn’t have the most screen time but chews up her meaty role as the most ambitious member of the family. With so much swag, hers is the most convincing transformation, that her brother comments that she, unlike them, seemed to really belong in the house. She also gets to do the now-famous famous jingle, and has what for my money is the most memorable shot in the film when she sits atop the shit-spewing toilet, calmly lighting a cigarette, resigned to the Kims’ utterly failed plans.
Many have pointed out that there is no single parasite in the film, that the characters are all symbiotes leeching off each other and no traditional moral protagonist or antagonist (Bong describes it as a “tragedy without villains“). Even so, Bong makes some pretty cutting observations about the system that allows these events to transpire. While everyone’s in the moral grey area in South Korea’s capitalistic free-for-all, the only ones that benefit in the long run are the well-to-do, and the have-nots end up with nothing. The very last shot of the movie mirrors the opening one, panning to Kim Ki-Woo’s face in the half basement. For all their efforts and hijinks, the Kims end up literally in the same place as they started things out; in fact, they’re even worse off since the sister is dead, and the father, compared to a cockroach by his wife earlier in the film, is reduced to living the cockroach’s life, scurrying around out of his hiding hole for food at night. Even the fantasy ending of Ki-Woo saving up in order to buy the house will never happen – it would take him 540 years in order to buy it.
In this story, capitalism only benefits the 1%, and socioeconomic inequality and class distinction is permanent. To the rich, ghosts aren’t made up nightmares, they’re the poor people creeping out of their basement. Capitalism is portrayed as social Darwinism – the poor must fight desperately against each other to move up, as we see in the basement scenes. There’s only enough room for so many parasites, even with a corpulent host. When it comes down to it, it’s every man for themselves, and we see that in the flooding scene as neighbors are pleading for help and promptly ignored. Like Mrs. Kim says, it’s easy to be nice when you’re rich – the wealthy are just like poor people but with the creases all ironed out.
But it’s not only the state of poverty that gets you really into trouble; it’s really about wanting more. The housekeeper and her husband down in the basement were just happy to live underground, where they’d been for years, and all they wanted, what they begged for, was just food and sustenance once a week (there is also some interesting commentary on North Korea here, with the housekeeper’s impressions and the way the husband respects Mr. Park). The Kims, on the other hand, are increasingly ambitious, even after all of their family members have infiltrated the Park household, they dream of bigger things as they splay out in the living room and get wasted off the expensive liquor (after starting off the movie drinking FiLite and then moving up to Sapporo). But in the end, their dreams are just dreams.
Perhaps the most impressive thing that Bong does is keeping Parasite as insanely accessible as it is, to the point where it has become a veritable cultural phenomenon and entered the worldwide zeitgeist despite the traditional American reluctance to get past the “one inch barrier” of subtitles. Even Bong’s interpreter, Sharon Choi, has become a bona fide internet celebrity. Ramdon recipes and memes abound (even seeing a resurgence in the wake of the coronavirus quarantine). This is even more impressive considering Bong, who has made English films before, purposely made Parasite a distinctly Korean film. There are so many linguistic nuances and translation choices like the aforementioned ram-don or Yonsei/Oxford or Kakao/WhatsApp, and a myriad of cultural nods and references that anyone with a spare five hours and a decent internet connection can dig up: from the IPtime wi-fi, the scholar’s stone, the Taiwanese cake shops and fried chicken joints, the drivers’ buffet, to even the fact that drugs laws in Korea are notably draconian, so that the Parks’ recreational drug use is a further example of privilege of the wealthy.
Bong tap into something deeper with this film. It’s like a treasure hunt – the more you dig, the more you find. The thoughtfulness and intricate details of the film turn each repeat viewing into an endless loop of more discoveries and more questions. Like the house itself, the entire film is immaculately designed and constructed, and Bong is the master architect in building this richly layered story. If he is the Michelangelo of our times, Parasite is his Sistine Chapel. It is groundbreaking, it is inspiring, it is important. The more you watch Parasite, the more you admire it, and the more you can’t stop thinking about it. Along with fellow auteurs Park Chan-wook and Lee Chang-dong, Bong has long been a flag carrier of 21st century Korean cinema, but with Parasite, he has now emerged not just as the preeminent Korean film director of his time, but as a force in global cinema to be reckoned with. The world awaits Bong’s next project with bated breath.
- There are a number of interesting similarities with Us – both are social thrillers with a set of mirroring four-person families, one above ground and the other below, revealing ugly truths about classism and social stratification in modern society [↩]
