photo by IMDb
photo by IMDb
A conscience creeping movie that crawls into its viewers and never lets go
The film Parasite premiered on October 11, 2019 (USA). Director Bong Joon-ho and CJ Entertainment's movie Parasite has made a box office of $262.7 million since its premiere. The movie succeeded from 2019 to 2020 after wiping out the Academy Awards and winning the Golden Globe awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
The plot revolves around a family willing to do whatever it takes to escape poverty. When they finally cheat their way to the upper class through lies and schemes, it makes us question how long it could last. The cast of the main character Choi Woo-shik. (Ki-woo, son of the family) Park So Dam (Ki-Jung sister of Ki-woo.) Kang Ho Song (Kim Ki Taek, father of the family) and Jang Hye-jin (Choong-sook, mother of the family) give a comedic but realistic and experienced act. The film excels in using the setting to hand information on themes and push character dynamics to a further extent. ¨The jobs that these characters take- tutoring, housekeeping, and driving- feature a rare moment where the rich and the poor are together in a very private space,¨ Director Bong stated ¨so close to one another that they can smell each other.¨ The movie uses smell, stairs, and objects to highlight the differences between social classes. These motifs signal to the viewer that those who benefit from these systems distance themselves from their nature.
Camera angles and light can show the power dynamic as well. The transitions smoothly melt into every scene without notice. The score consists of light piano/percussion and minimalist sound. It is clean and classical, with hints of staccato. The music is perfect to give the movie its tense and stress-inducing atmosphere. The sophisticated and fluid music mixed with the slightly sharp tempos brings out that contrast of rich and poor. It further extends that feeling of not belonging. All this points further to the theme critique of capitalism. Parasite brings a frightening but necessary question: Who are the parasites? And why is it difficult to answer that? This is what makes Parasite such an interesting and immersing movie.