Thursday, November 14, 2019

Parasite 2019 (Warning Subtitles)



A master class in film making. A ride through all emotions, peak and valleys, funny at times and deeply thoughtful at others. Each frame is visually interesting and showing the continuing not so subtle class struggle theme. A quote I heard recently "to each complex problem there are easy and wrong answers", which seems to fit so much of this movie.


Joon-ho Bong has quietly become one of the best international directors behind only Guillermo del Toro 'Pan's Labyrinth' (2006) and 'Devil's Backbone' (2001). If you don't know either one of these directors, fire up Google, Netflix, Red Box, cable movie channel, or make a trip to Wal-Mart. Joon-ho has written and directed some fantastic movies, including 'The Host' (2006) and 'Snowpiercer' (2013) often with themes of working-class or poor struggling.


Following a broke unemployed family who has to hustle to survive. A bit of good fortune gets them in with a rich family. Neither family is portrayed as good or evil nor smart or dumb. Too often in depictions of class struggle, the poor are dumb and the rich are evil. Here we see the Kim family quickly motivated to help each other out with numerous ingenious schemes, with each family member contributing in his own way. The Park family busy dealing with their own issues, having a large household tends to lead to many things coming up. Simple things can have very different meanings depending on where one lives.


While very sympathetic to the Kim family, it slowly unravels an uncomfortable truth. True they are a tight family who quickly helps each other. But, the person who introduces them to the Park family is quickly betrayed. They are ruthless in dispatching people in their way without a care. At one point a neighbor needs help getting his loaded bicycle up the stairs, they all rush past, not sparing ten seconds to help someone they know. Each member is desperate to get a job so they can eat, at first. That quickly gives way to taking advantage any way they can with quickly looking down at the Park family for being naive. Within a short time putting their new-found prosperity a risk. The father Ki-taek who tries to be on his best behavior still is kind of rude, disrespectful, lazy, has a body odor problem and is quick to point the finger at someone else. To be fair the viewer sees how bad their lives suck, the struggle is real!


The movie takes a rollercoaster series of sharp dark turns. I love it when I can't tell where a movie is going. It ends in a deeply depressing thud. A promise is made, that is hopeful and quickly uplifting, but much like in 'Death of Salesman' an empty promise without merit. That leaves nothing but sorrow and sadness, that can't be fulfilled. All the dark turns and mayhem but nothing compares to the stark realization for the survivers.



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