Parasite

2019

R

Parasite is possibly the most talked about movie over the last couple of months, mainly because of its domination of the Academy Awards. I wanted to give it a try, but was a little skeptical at first. I knew that the movie was a Korean film and I was concerned that there would be a disconnect, due to the fact that I don’t speak Korean. Obviously, English subtitles are present, but I was still a little concerned. Without further ado, let’s dig in.

The main focus of the film is the Kim family. They’re a poor family in South Korea living in the low-income housing part of town and the family struggles to earn money for food and essential things. They do things such as folding pizza boxes for the local pizza restaurant to earn income. Things aren’t looking great for the Kim family, but the son’s, Kim Ki-woo/Kevin (Choi Woo-shik), wealthy friend Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon) has a proposition for Ki-woo. Min is an English tutor for a teenage girl, Park Da-hye, (Jung Ji-so) of an extremely wealthy family, but can no longer be her tutor because he is leaving to study abroad. He feels confident that Ki-woo will watch over her, because Min is in love with the young girl, but is going to wait for her to get into college to marry her. Min vouches for Ki-woo to be Da-hye’s tutor, even though he doesn’t have proper qualifications. Shortly after, Ki-woo meets the mother, Choi Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong), of the Park family and is hired.

After giving off a good impression, Ki-woo and Yeon-gyo develop a trusting relationship very quickly. Ki-woo learns that the Parks’ son Park Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun) is in need of an art therapist. Ki-woo recommends to Yeon-gyo the she hire his sister Kim Ki-jung /Jessica (Park So-dam). The Kim father Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) is brought on as the personal driver for the Park father, Nathan (Lee Sun-kyun) after Ki-woo and Ki-jung plot to get the driver fired. They do the same with the long-standing housekeeper (Lee Jung-eun), but learn of her peach allergy and use that to get her fired. After the housekeeper is gone, Ki-taek suggests to Nathan using a fraudulent work agency to hire their mother, Park Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin). The Parks don’t know that their new employees are a family and definitely don’t know that they’re fraudulently capitalizing off of their wealth. The Kims play off this fraudulent scheme very well and the Parks don’t suspect a thing throughout the majority of the film. However, things turn sour when the Kims get an unexpected visitor while staying at the Parks house while the family is away from home on a camping trip.

In short, the poor family scams a wealthy family and as a result, things get interesting. The definition of parasite, from Oxford, is, “an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense.” This perfectly defines the plotline of the movie. The film, in its entirety, tells a story of a class struggle between the rich and the poor and clearly how things are easier for the rich and how the poor become poorer and more susceptible to ongoing issues. It also touches on materialistic and capitalistic culture and shows a stark contrast between the Parks and Kims and how both families paths to success differ.

I absolutely loved this movie. I didn’t really know what to expect going into it, but things turned out to be better that way. I knew that this film had a lot of positive reviews and won many awards over the last couple of months and I wanted to give it a go. I did not read anything about the movie prior to watching. All I knew about the film was that it won Best Picture at the Oscars and it was a Korean film. I was very impressed. It plays with nearly every level of emotion and you are anticipating every little detail. Like I said before, I was concerned that there could be a disconnect due to the fact that the movie is in a different language, but that didn’t play a role at all. If anything, it helped me focus more on what was going on.

If you are wondering if this is a film that is rewatchable within a reasonable amount of time, it 100% is. I feel like it almost a must to re-watch this film, because there are many details throughout the film that are so subtle, but so meaningful to the integrity of the story. This is a Korean film with English subtitles, but I can’t urge to you enough that it shouldn’t deter you from watching this. This film is fascinating and one of the best movies I have ever seen in my life.

GRADE: 4.9/5

Yacs

Movie Review: Parasite