Parasite review

The relationship between rich and poor has become an increasingly common area of interest for contemporary filmmakers, with such diverse offerings as Joker, Little Women, and Ready or Not being released in just the last twelve months. Some of these movies are broader or more successful than others, but none in recent memory is as sophisticated as Parasite, the latest from South Korean superstar Bong Joon-ho. It’s an exhilarating, surprising tale that refuses to dumb itself down or allow the audience easy answers, intent on keeping you precariously balanced on its moralistic knife edge. 

The set-up is initially quite simple. The son of the comically poor Kim family Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) lands a job fraudulently posing as a tutor for the daughter of the equally comically wealthy Park family (Da-hye, played by Jeong Ji-so). Over the course of a few weeks he manages to land his parents and sister employment with the same family by engineering increasingly convoluted schemes that oust the Park’s previous housekeeper and chauffer. The Kims play dumb, pretending to be strangers to each other, while the Parks seem actually dumb enough to buy the cockamamie ruse.

This being a Bong movie, you already know there are radical narrative jolts coming at some point, but I won’t get into spoilers here. What’s important is the screenplay never loses track of the central analogy that these families stand in for larger societal frictions. Eventually these frictions threaten to create an earthquake that topples one or both of the opposed houses.

It’s worth touching on the houses, the literal structures that frame most of the movie, because they perfectly communicate how in-control director Bong is throughout his story. Both families houses are sets built from scratch on sound stages in Korea that have been designed with meticulous precision by Bong and his production team. Every nook and cranny have been tirelessly planned out so the camera moves through the interiors with a sure, confident grace that always has you exactly where Bong wants you. The architecture is as important to the story as anything; the cramped, bizarrely off kilter Kim house juxtaposed with the elegant ergonomics of the Parks.

The houses are one piece of a puzzle that is constantly reminding you of the killer tension at the heart of this film. Bong is no stranger to class conflict, having woven it into a number of his earlier works; Barking Dogs Never Bite, Memories of Murder, Snowpiercer and the Host. Parasite in many ways feels like a culmination of a lot of those ideas, displaying a nuanced empathy for all the main players that isn’t afraid to grapple with everyone’s virtues and everyone’s faults, ultimately condemning the increasingly constricting system that forces fundamentally decent people into destructive, desperate antagonism.

As inventive and enjoyable as it is rigorous and bleak, Parasite is one of the years major achievements, spurred by a faultless cast led by regular Bong collaborator Song kang-ho, and a director at the peak of his powers. This is a truly global story that still feels alive in ways that are specifically Korean and should stick in the public consciousness for a long time. Despite our differences, we are all united by our love of Bong Joon-ho.