Movie Talk Episode 05 - Parasite
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Directors in world cinema use suspense in various ways. Some use ghosts, while others use psychological illnesses. However, the film Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, is the greatest South Korean cinematic creation of the 21st century, which used the rich-poor class divide in our everyday society and human selfishness to create a breathtaking suspense and maximum thrill. This film was written in golden letters in cinema history by becoming the first-ever foreign language film in the world to win the main Oscar award for Best Picture at an Academy Award ceremony. Today, in this article, we are talking in great detail about the screenplay structure, visual symbols, and the social message hidden inside this movie.
The story begins with the Kim family, which consists of four members who are extremely poor and unemployed. They live in a small semi-basement apartment where sunlight barely reaches and the toilet overflows. While living with no way to survive, the young son of this family coincidentally gets a job teaching English tuition to the daughter of the wealthy Park family in the city.
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From this point, the story turns into a completely different path. Ki-woo creates fake certificates for himself and wins the trust of the Park family. After that, he very cleverly conceals the true identity of his family and introduces his sister as an art teacher, his father as a driver, and his mother as the housekeeper into that mansion. What they do is become a group of parasites living off that wealthy family without them noticing.
Although the first half of the film flows in a very entertaining way, after an unexpected turning point that occurs on a certain rainy night, the movie becomes an extremely intense psychological thriller. The secret hidden behind the walls and underneath the floor of that mansion leaves the audience in deep suspense.
Director Bong Joon-ho uses camera frames and set designs not just to show a story, but to speak the truth about society. Throughout this movie, staircases are frequently seen. The poor Kim family lives in the lowest area of the city. To go to the wealthy house, they must continuously climb up long staircases. In a scene during a heavy rainstorm in the movie, there is a sequence where the Kim family runs endlessly downward from the wealthy mansion toward their home along the city stairs and slopes. Through this, it shows without words the tragic, vast distance between the upper class and the lower class of society. Also, one of the most powerful symbols in this movie is smell. The father of the wealthy Park family finds it difficult to tolerate the smell of the basements where poor people live. He describes it as the smell that comes when boiling rags, or the smell of people who ride the subway. This factor of smell is a wonderful symbol showing that even if a poor person changes their clothes, they cannot hide their poverty from society.
The name of the movie is Parasite, right? Which means an organism that lives off another. At first, we think that the poor Kim family, who sneaks into the wealthy house and drains their money, are the parasites. But the director asks us a different question. Isn't the wealthy Park family, who cannot even do their simple daily tasks by themselves—meaning cooking, washing clothes, and driving—and depend on the labor of poor people, also a kind of parasite?
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No character in this film is completely evil. The rich people are also very kind, innocent human beings. The poor people are also humans trying to survive. The film very subtly teaches that the fault lies not with the people, but within the unfair social system that has put them in this situation.
The climax of this movie, or rather the birthday party scene that unfolds within the final 20 minutes, is one of the most turbulent and heartbreaking endings in cinema history. The audience is left stunned as the entire story ends in violence and grief in a way no one could have predicted. The final scene that comes after that and the letter written by the son make us realize the hopes we have in life and its reality.
Parasite is one of those movies that you must absolutely watch and study over and over again.