Parasite

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.

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.

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that contained as many genres as 'Parasite'. The movie starts out almost like an 'Ocean's Eleven' heist film and then expands into a comedy, mystery, thriller, drama, romance, crime and even horror film. It really did have everything and it was strikingly good at all of them too.

I love a film that respects its audience. There are so many details in this movie that are crucially important and yet the film trusts its audience to notice them and acknowledge them without ramming them down our throats. There are a lot of layers to this film and I suspect for this reason its rewatch-ability factor will be very high.

The film was incredibly entertaining too. I can't think of a boring scene in this movie and yet on the surface for large parts of the film you would say not a lot is happening, at least in terms of action. Fascinating characters and brilliant dialogue are what create this. I had a great time with 'Parasite' and I think most that give it a chance will too.

What an amazing film! Clearly an essay on the class divide. Writing lovable but nasty people is tough, but perfectly executed here.

They quite clearly cross the line, and when I mean "they" I mean bother the working class and the upper class. You could easily argue that "parasite" refers to one family trying to suck another family dry. Or that the upper class is draining the labour of the lower class, and expecting them to be grateful about it too! There is also something about the American Indian theme, a metaphor for dying cultural traditions which are being replaced by modernity? Nature is dog eat dog? Or is it a homage to an "idyllic" past where Native American culture was relatively classless?

Either way a must watch if you can handle subtitles!

I am remarkably stingy with my 10/10 ratings. I'll be the first person to acknowledge this. Of the roughly 2600 titles I've rated on here, only 34 have a 10. Parasite is one of them. If this isn't a masterpiece, then I don't know what is.

I'm going to keep it vague on the plot-front, because I didn't know anything about it going in, and was really excited to see it progress and unfold in satisfying, unexpected ways.

What I will say is that this film, more than just about any other I've seen, put me through so many different emotional states during its 132-minute runtime, and did so without ever feeling muddled or tonally inconsistent. Parts of this movie were hilarious. Parts were heartbreaking. Other parts were insanely suspenseful (I'm honestly not sure if I've felt this close to the edge of my seat since the final season of Breaking Bad, way back in 2013).

And it does all this while being perfectly paced, beautifully directed, and amazingly acted from every single member of its cast. All the characters are understandable and sympathetic to some degree; the amount of conflict, drama and tension derived from a narrative with no clear heroes and villains is staggering. You come to care for just about all of them.

I'm stumped to come up with any flaws for this movie. And sure, I've seen many movies that are hard to fault, but it's rare that a movie appeals to me on a gut level and excites me to this degree while also being so close to technically perfect. It's extremely entertaining, thoroughly moving in so many different ways, and as icing on the cake there's a ton of social commentary and some heavy themes to chew on once the movie's over (and this one's not going to leave my head for a while, I can tell).

Catch this one when you can and believe the hype. Joon-Ho Bong has made many great films (and so far no bad one's), but this even manages to stand head and shoulders above all the others.

When it comes time to consider what the best film of the 2010s was, this one will surely be up there.