Parasite

A poor family see an opportunity whenever their son starts tutoring English for a wealthy family - if they can engineer it, they can each get one of the jobs within the household. This is the basis for a film that starts out as a sort of con story, seeing the rich family as the 'marks'. As it plays out though, it keeps this assumption in the background, eating at the viewer as an idea, before then making it very relevant in the closing aspects of the plot. Between the start and then, the focus is on the various twists and turns of the drama itself. In this the film engages, and I found it easy to engage with it on the basis of what was happening.

The later develops do work better though when viewed in the context of the social aspect. There are lots of clever critics that can talk to you about the meaning and hidden depths of commentary from the film; for me the key one was the falseness of the 'con' itself. Although the family mock the gullibility of the rich family, it is not like they are stealing money from them, or somehow dislodging them from their position in life - no, they are just providing labour to them in exchange of comparatively low wages. They are doing this at the expense of other working people just trying to keep a job, and the rich family could probably not care less about the 'truth' as long as their needs continue to be met. This aspect is important for the direction of the later stages of the film, and adds sense to what happens and why, but it is interesting in and of itself. Technically the film looks great, and the director builds mood and tone well. Performances are strong across all the cast, but the turn from Song Kang Ho probably was my favourite as he was the most subtle and had the most space to shift across the running time.

There is a lot of talk for Oscar recognition, but it is a handsome, clever film and the timing in the year is right - I don't see it being the first foreign language film to win best picture, but this is more to do with the system than with the film. Regardless of awards or not, it is an engaging drama, with unusual developments, and built on top of an intelligent social aspect which links well to the direction of the narrative.

This is a movie about a class struggle in South Korea, like what movie "Us" attempts to do but done properly. It is a stark reminder of what true living standards for most South Koreans look like, and its realism is very painful. Few are aware of the fact that up to the 1980s, South Korea was in fact more impoverished than North Korea, and it was only late that the situation reversed with famines of the 90s etc, but many people still live miserable lives, and situation is very similar to that in China, where a few got gloriously rich but the urban masses still live in bug infested cheap dwellings.

Some crafty members of this underclass manage to con contemptuous rich man into employing them as his servants. For many Asians smell is a way to express utter contempt, and this is often directed against the white people, who, being able to process milk, smell "like butter" and are seen in rac ist light as unclean, but the same rac ist contempt is directed towards the poor. The poor accept these valuations and fight for the crumbles, like roaches in the dark, but in life and death situations, resentment might boil up and the contempt might cost the rich their empty heads.

The movie paints a sad picture of modern East Asian societies, with many subtle points, criticizes their culture and emulation of the America, with a few cruel but precise strokes. The sheer talent of the Korean filmmaker, but also the fact that West likes movies from foreign countries that are self bashing, allowing the worst condescension rooted in colonialism that failed miserably in East Asia to thrive, one more reason to cheer this slightly overrated movie.

This movie is a gosh darn masterpiece. It will make you belly laugh, it will chill you to the bone, and it will make you shed a tear. This movie will stay with you long after the credits are over.

If you plan on watching this movie, AVOID SPOILERS AT ALL COSTS.

In a meritocracy, success and fortune are reserved for those who deserve it--those who develop solid plans according to their talents and abilities and who execute those plans through hard work and determination. Anyone can rise to the top, and for some lucky Cinderella, plucked from the cinders and gussied up in gowns, the meritocracy represents the heights of perfect egalitarian society: "I started with nothing and ended up with everything I ever desired; you, too, can achieve you dreams, if only you try."

The promise of unobstructed sunshine at the top of the mountain becomes justification for bitter competition, backstabbing, deceit, and callousness. You climb the crooked ladder until you make it to the straight one, and then, perhaps, when you at last feel secure, you can afford to be kind and confident and generous. "It's easy to be nice when you're rich," the mother in this film (Jang Hye-jin) at one point observes.

But it's a very long and very crooked ladder, and sometimes the rungs give out beneath your grip, and sometimes they've been dangerously greased by those who climbed before you, and sometimes the ladder itself is simply kicked down--either by those above you or, just as often, by those staring up from the ground below. There are a lot of people trying to climb that one ladder.

But in a meritocracy, you can't blame the ladder or the other people trying to climb it. Nor can you blame the fact that all the good stuff is kept so many stories up instead of down at the ground where everyone can easily reach it. No, you must blame yourself. You should have tread more carefully. You should have climbed more quickly. You should have used a firmer and more precise grip, anticipated disasters, and known just when to leap. If you fail in a meritocracy, it's all your fault. You should have tried harder. Better luck next time.

Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), the young man who is the main character of PARASITE, several times refers to "metaphors," and the film itself is, of course, a metaphor. On a surface level, viewers are treated to a very thrilling, engaging, well-paced and well-plotted crime story. At all times, however, bubbling up from beneath the slick surface of this genre film, there are deeply personal, meaningful truths that should resonate with almost any viewer. These insights are rarely foregrounded. They are so subtly interwoven, in fact, that if you're like me, you may be completely surprised when the final shots of the film roll and you realize that you are emotionally devastated by the intimate, humanist story you've just witnessed. Bong Joon-ho's filmmaking is so extraordinary here that he'll make you fully invested in the lives of his characters without you even realizing he's done so.

I want to avoid spoilers here, but suffice it to say that PARASITE is a masterpiece--beautifully lensed, enthrallingly edited, superbly acted, and intimately involving.

South Korea has a population that is one sixth the size of the United States, and that population is stacked into skyscrapers in an area slightly smaller than the state of Kentucky. Higher education is widespread, so parents with means try to make their children stand above the pack by hiring them tutors and signing them up for extracurriculars and afterschool programs. I lived in Korea once, and the children I taught there were sometimes engaged in learning ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week--public school, English-immersion private school, piano class, soccer team, taekwondo, math camp, chess club, and so on. I routinely worked sixty to seventy hours a week on salary, but at bars I would meet young men my age who were expected to work far more than that, who slept at their desks so that they did not need to pry themselves from work for too long. As the father (Song Kang-ho) in the film at one point says, this is a country where fifty young men with college degrees apply for a mere security guard job. One can't afford not to struggle.

The themes of this story are not just localized to Korea, however. They are the story of global capitalism, and the specter of American materialism (and imperialism; note the "Indians") looms heavily over the film. Meritocracy makes cannibals of us all. It's nice to dream, and sometimes the dreamers who plan and struggle well enough can indeed climb out of the basement and into the sunshine, and how nice an ending it is when they do. But the film also makes it clear that sometimes all that planning and dreaming may be, maybe, just whims and fancy. More often, it seems, our pipe dreams are content to leave us with nothing more than the whiff of spewed sewage.

The most original film of 2019 and it is wickedly funny and darkly disturbing all at the same time. The narrative and the actors were excellent. One of the better endings of a movie in quite a while. Class warfare at its best.