"Parasite" (2019) Review
There is a moment in Parasite, the newest film from South Korean master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, where the film takes a step far beyond anything it has presented up to that point. It’s towards the middle of the movie, and to even begin to hint at what it is would be a huge sin to commit in writing a review.
But I only mention it immediately because if this review seems much shorter and vaguer than normal, this single moment is why. It is the point of no return in Parasite’s narrative, where the whole story tilts into a brand-new momentum that consumes its characters completely. It’s the best kind of narrative reveal you can imagine, the kind that miraculously fits into the previously established story and is placed at a point in the narrative where the consequences actually have time to breathe. This isn’t a twist that’s introduced right down to the wire, but the kind that unfolds and matters in a way beyond shock value.
What plot I can talk about in Parasite up to that point is in the film’s trailers, and I feel more than comfortable telling you. Somewhere in a major South Korean city, the Kim family is extremely poor. They scramble into corners of their semi-basement apartment to steal WiFi from nearby coffee shops. They fold pizza boxes to make a pitiful amount of money. The son of the family, Ki-woo (Choi Woo Sik), suddenly encounters a timely opportunity, courtesy of his college student friend, Min (Park Seo Joon).
Min has been tutoring a high school sophomore, Da Hye Park (Jung Ziso), in English. He’s planning on traveling abroad, and convinces Ki-Woo to take over, mostly because Da Hye’s family is very rich. The problem is that Ki-Woo isn’t actually college student, but he does know English well enough to fake his way into the job. With the help of Ki-Woo’s sister, Ki-jung (Park So Dam), and her photoshop skills, Ki-woo successfully cons his way into the job.
But Ki-woo quickly realizes that the tech CEO father of the house, Dong-ik Park (Lee Sun Kyun), is never really home, leaving all of the house’s staff members to the oversight of the wife, Yeon-kyo Park (Cho Yeo Jeong). It just so happens that Mrs. Park is extremely naive, and upon hearing that the young son of the Park family, Da-Song Park (Jung Hyun Jun) needs an art tutor. Ki-Woo successfully cons his sister Ki-jung into becoming a “renowned art tutor.”
The Kim family has four members though, including father Ki-taek Kim (Song Kang Ho, a veteran of Bong Joon Ho’s films) and mother Chung-sook Kim (Chang Hyae Jin). And the Park family has a driver and a housekeeper position, both occupied by currently employed people. Soon enough, the Kim siblings start to build elaborate cons to get their parents employed, and the closer each family member gets to the opulent life of the Park’s, the more the disparity in their class divisions become clear.
And that disparity (and the film’s unflinching dedication to exploring several shades of that disparity) is where Parasite finds its vice-grip like strength. There have been a LOT of movies throughout the last decade that examine class warfare (hell, Bong Joon Ho made one of the bigger swings this decade with Snowpiercer in 2014), but Parasite feels like the most successful of that entire group.
Parasite recognizes that the things we love and hate in both of these families. On one hand, the ignorance of the Park family to the situations the poor face every day (and their remarks on the odor of people who they don’t realize literally don’t have access to a living space that allows them to even smell good in the first place) put them in a bad category. On the other, despite the ignorance going on in their own household, Mr. Park loves his son Da-Song more than anything, and Mrs. Park’s ignorance isn’t malicious (though, her ignorance has devastating consequences).
On the flip-side, you want to see the Kim family succeed in their con. They have been pushed to the bottom of the societal ladder by factors both in their control and outside of it. It’s hard not to cheer and clap when they successfully con their way into a new position at the house (the final con, in particular, is one of the best scenes I’ve watched in a movie all year). Except that the film absolutely acknowledges in no uncertain terms that the Kim family has shoved other workers to the bottom of the same ladder they’re on to get to where they are and does not let them off the hook.
This movie could have so easily devolved into some kind of toothless “we’re not so different after all” class movie, but instead cracks open wounds everywhere to show what the rich and poor in this story are really made of at their core. Our wealth (or lack of it) doesn’t mean much when violent forces suddenly emerge from unexpected places.
As a slight warning, I will say that this movie eventually has some pretty shocking violence in its back-half. I only say that more as a warning of tone, because if you only watched the first half of this movie, you’d probably think you were just watching a really good South Korean dark comedy. By the end of the movie though, it’s somehow a dark comedy, a French farce, a Hitchock-Esque thriller, and a class warfare film all at the same time.
The fact that the film never trips over itself while being all of these things is beyond miraculous. Bong Joon Ho’s biggest trademark is his ability to convincingly change tones on a dime, but the tone shifts here are buttery-smooth, which is stunning considering how there are a couple of scenes that move between every tone listed above in literally a few minutes or less. It’s so miraculous that it wasn’t until a couple of viewings in that I realized just how complicated these tone shifts are and how effortless they feel in the final film.
I haven’t even talked about the technical aspects here, because honestly, it’s a Bong Joon Ho film. His sense of staging actors inside of a scene has been practically perfect for well over a decade now, and Parasite isn’t an exception. What is exceptional this time around is the production design, which is used to such perfect effect that I didn’t even realize I was looking at film sets. The Kim semi-apartment is pretty good looking, but the sets built to represent the Park family’s super-rich modern home is staggering. If it wasn’t for the existence of Midsommar this year, I would easily call Parasite’s production design to be the best of the year.
Oh, and Bong Joon Ho’s long-time cinematographer, Hong Kyung-pyo delivers absolutely gorgeous shots for… Literally every shot? Every camera move is deeply considered and calculated, no shots are wasted. Even simple “shot/reverse shot” setups have extra flourishes that communicate character relationships, and how they’ve changed throughout the course of a scene. It’s not terribly flashy cinematography, but the kind that flies under the radar because of how effortless they make it all look.
I think that’s the number one word I’d use to describe Parasite: Effortless.
It makes every single one of its creative risks look like a breeze to achieve, but when you look at the sheer number of movies that have attempted similar class warfare narratives and failed, you begin to realize just how miraculous Parasite is.
If I have any complaints about the film (I honestly don’t, these are just minor minor issues I have), it’s that I wish the musical score was a bit more memorable. It definitely has standout moments here and there, but it does fade into the background more often than I’d like. The film also has an epilogue that’s very structurally awkward at first but eventually snaps into a place in a way that makes sense by the end.
As I said, minor issues.
This is all building to one very simple conclusion I have about Parasite:
Parasite is my favorite film of 2019. It is definitely one of my favorite films of the entire decade. It is, in my mind, in the same category as Jordan Peele’s Get Out from 2017. It’s the kind of film that’s not only excellent for all time but perfectly represents the culture of its timeframe. We’re not getting a film this good for a while.
(Though, if something else as good or better than Parasite popped up in the next year, that wouldn’t be so bad.)
