Parasite (Gisaengchung)
PARASITE - MadManFilms
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a brilliant and insightful commentary on class and modern family dynamics; it’s a modern masterpiece. From start to finish, the film continually escalates situations to their highest dramatic potential, employing a masterful concept of tension, drama and appropriately-timed comedy. The film explores its themes with great depth, utilizing every character on-screen. What results is a visually rich, intelligent and unrelenting exploration of the divide between the working class and the rich and what extremes this divide can push the less fortunate.
Song Kang-ho — a regular member of Joon-ho’s filmography — leads the cast as Kim Ki-taek, an unemployed father who is searching for a way out of poverty and always has a plan. When his son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), accepts a position as a tutor for a young girl in a rich family, Ki-taek — along with his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin) and daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) — hatch a plan to infiltrate the rich house by becoming employed as valued and trusted servants. This plan involves deception, forgery and a great theatrical ability. What they soon find, however, is that nothing goes according to plan and everything soon falls apart in a series of mishaps and unexpected revelations.
Joon-ho skillfully crafts a memorable and distinct collection of characters that feel three-dimensional and each give the film a different perspective through which to explore its complex subject matter. The film takes time to draw parallels between Ki-taek’s family and the rich family they serve in terms of fundamental values, while also underscoring the stark contrast between their financial circumstances and societal value. Though the rich and powerful Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) and Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) trust and respect their newfound servants, the film makes it clear that they view Ki-taek and his family as lesser than themselves and keep them at arm’s length because of their inferior social status. However, both families are endowed with sympathetic qualities and thus the film shies away from a conventional black-and-white narrative in favour of a morally ambiguous study of these characters.
Joon-ho and Han Jin-won’s screenplay takes careful and deliberate steps to set up the world the characters live in and subtly craft a detail-oriented and thematically dense story. Through the use of engaging scenes of realistic and at times hilarious dialogue, a slowly rising sense of suspense and danger and meta-commentary on the role of metaphors in storytelling, the film succeeds in fully developing the central idea at its core: material wealth is easily attainable yet wholly unnatural for human beings to maintain. At the centre of every character’s motivation is a desire for all the artificial trappings of wealth and prosperity, masking an innate survival instinct that pushes them to avoid poverty at all costs.
The exploration of these themes within these characters is supplemented by forceful and hypnotizing lead performances from the ensemble cast, effective use of the camera to communicate story details and character traits visually and thrilling dramatic set-pieces that clearly define each act and drive the story forward with a sense of purpose and narrative momentum. Parasite is a bold, genre-defying and deeply cathartic experience that prioritizes the exploration of its themes of classism and survival through its characters while remaining entertaining and visually captivating throughout.
Parasite is released November 8th and February 7th in the U.S. and U.K.
