Film Review: Parasite
The hype is real for the Year’s best film
I don’t find myself trafficking in hyperbole or superlatives very often, but Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a cinematic masterstroke that deserves every bit of its widespread acclaim. A film that defies both genre and expectation, Parasite is a complex and scathing meditation on class and human nature that bends to the director’s razor-sharp whims. Easy to love and difficult to categorize, Bong Joon-ho’s latest is undoubtedly the best film of the year. This review will detail some broad plot points, so if you prefer a pure experience, I suggest not reading any further. Minor spoilers ahead…
If you’re at all versed in director Bong Joon-ho’s storied oeuvre, then Parasite will undoubtedly trigger pangs of familiarity. But even with the patience of Memories of Murder, the tragicomedy of The Host, the gravity of Mother, the class warfare of Snowpiercer, and the whimsy of Okja as ingredients, the famed South Korean director’s latest film thrives as a different organism altogether; a gripping puzzle box that consistently slips from the coils of convention, Parasite is a ceaselessly entertaining meditation on class and human nature. Few filmmakers command a mastery of tone as potently as Bong, but what lives within this particular Palme d’Or winner is akin to a cinematic chameleon: a twist-laden narrative that effortlessly shapeshifts from comedy to drama to thriller with liquid ease. Perhaps the most ringing endorsement that could be given to Parasite is that many will ask what the film is about, to which there is only one good answer: “You just have to go and see it.”
Parasite ultimately boils down to a tale of two houses - two families galaxies apart in caste and circumstance - brought together in a simmering powder keg of confrontation. The Kims live in relative poverty, and form a close-knit nuclear unit of petty hustlers. While the family is savvy and street-smart, their wiles are mostly spent on snatching free wi-fi and sweet-talking their employer, a local pizza shop for which they fold boxes. For the Kims - patriarch Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho, a Bong Joon-ho regular), his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae Jin), and two children Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik) and Ki-jung (Park So-dam) - their cozy hovel and little victories in making ends meet are a way of life. But when a unique opportunity arises for Ki-woo, it changes his family’s entire trajectory: forging a college diploma with the help of his sister Ki-jung, he secures an English tutoring job for the wealthy Park family a few neighborhoods over. Insular in their wondrous and modern mansion, the Parks - especially the comfortable Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo Jeong) - represent the most obliviously moneyed rung of the hegemony. Taking full advantage of Mrs. Park’s naiveté and parental paranoia, Ki-woo flatters and manipulates to better not only his own station, but his entire family’s.
“Few filmmakers command a mastery of tone as potently as Bong [Joon-ho], but what lives within this particular Palme d’Or winner is akin to a cinematic chameleon…”
What follows is Parasite at its funniest and most entertaining: a clever and intricately plotted reverse-heist, if you will. Ki-woo, fully embedded within the Park clan, begins maneuvering openings for his other family members. First, his sister Ki-jung is brought in as an “art-therapist” for the Parks’ oddball son, then his father Ki-taek as chauffeur, then finally his mother Chung-sook as housekeeper. Complete with montages and a masterful cutting between planning and execution, this portion of the story is wicked fun - and if this procedural marvel of con-artistry was all there was to the film, it would still be somewhat of a cinematic feat, but with Bong Joon-ho being the storyteller he is, it’s only half of the film’s intricately grand design. Bong saves Parasite’s most devious surprises for the back half of the film, and to detail any of it - even in broad strokes - would ruin the fun.
“If I had all this, I would be kinder.” Says Ki-taek at one point in the film, lounging in his posh new surroundings. The Kims and Parks live only neighborhoods apart, but in the world of Parasite, it might as well be entire solar systems that span between them. Bong paints a complex portrait of the vast chasm of incomprehension that straddles the class divide, but never tells his audience how to think. Serving up neither condescending invective nor finger-wagging moralization, Parasite instead holds up a dark mirror open to interpretation. Who is the leech? Who is the host? The film goes to great lengths to portray its characters as complicated and flawed human beings: the Parks aren’t bourgeois mustache-twirlers just as the Kims aren’t proletariat heroes, but everyone is at least part ignoramus.
A meticulous confluence of storytelling, cinematography, and set design that effortlessly blends genres, it’s easy to see how the fandom - or Bonghive, as Twitter would have it - has rallied behind Parasite. Bong Joon-ho’s latest, and quite possibly greatest, is a rollercoaster riding the rails of the human condition, and by the time its chilling denouement plays out, you won’t know what hit you. Parasite, disguised by its crowdpleasing antics and moments of levity, is a film that surprisingly lingers long after the credits roll. Like the Kims distracted by the sheen of wealth and opulence in the Park mansion, the film operates as sleight of hand, revealing its dark and poignant underbelly only at the most opportune of times.
