It’s
thrilling that the Academy of Motion Pictures has showered the brilliant Korean
film, “Parasite”, with a clutch of Oscars. This hugely inventive black
comedy/satire/thriller about class and money richly deserves them. (Review:
Patrick Compton 9/10)
Parasite is one of those films that appeals on a number of levels, perhaps
some of them half-consciously.
Bong Joon-ho’s satire begins simply – and
very funnily – as a kind of human heist movie in which members of a poor Korean
family slowly infiltrate the gilded corridors of a very rich family.
The process begins innocently enough when a
student leaving the country offers his friend, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), his
part-time job as a rich girl’s tutor. Ki-woo, who lives in a sordid underground
urban hovel, so impresses the Park family – the dad is Dong-in and his airhead
wife is Yeon-kwo –that he sets in train a process whereby his sister, mom and
dad all get jobs with the family.
The Parks assume, of course, that they have
employed a series of individuals – not a conniving family – and this ignorance
feeds into the humour as well as the movie’s growing tension.
I don’t want to spoil your pleasure by
revealing how this basic situation develops: suffice to say that the film is
(partly) a play on the haves who live in the sunlit uplands and the have-nots
who moulder underground.
The theme is complex: the rich Parks are
not horrible people and the poor Kims are certainly no angels. The film’s title
takes a bit of unpacking and different filmgoers may have different ideas about
what it means.
What is undeniable, however, is that this
film is funny, bloody and perceptive. It’s a movie about class and inequality
and maybe the capitalist system, not to mention a score of nuances that stem
from these concepts.
But you'll be relieved to know that it's
not a movie for academic navel-gazers. It's for everyone. More than anything,
it’s a treat and a treasure that almost certainly repays another viewing.
Parasite (in Korean with English subtitles) is showing at Gateway Mall. - Patrick
Compton
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