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You’ve Never Seen a Movie Quite Like “Parasite”
It’s a film not to be missed
It’s relatively rare for a non-western film to win a top award at a prestigious western film festival. When it does happen, it means the laureate is something special. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Parasite is indeed special on many counts. On one level, the film is a sad chronicle of poor people’s struggles; on another, it’s a crazy, often hilarious, but dangerous ride on a metaphorical rickety roller-coaster of lies and cover-ups.
More specifically the apparently superficial, slightly comical, narrative is interwoven with multi-layered social messages. One kind of viewer can enjoy it as an absurd story of subterfuge, theft, and violence mixed with comedy, while another can see it as an allegory for the inequality and unfairness of capitalist society. Writing for The New York Times, A. O. Scott described Parasite as “the kind of smart, generous, aesthetically energized movie that obliterates the tired distinctions between art films and popcorn movies.” In short, it’s a film that’s hard to categorize.
Without revealing the plot, the movie’s story centers on two Korean families living in Seoul. The Kim family is very poor and the Park family is very wealthy, the father being the owner of a successful, global IT company. Most of the Kims are unemployed.
