South Korean director Bong Jong-Ho’s films are unpredictable cinematic adventures that masterfully blend humor, suspense, mystery and horror. His most recent, “Parasite”, is certainly better. With six Oscar nominations [i] (marking history as the first Korean nominee for Best Picture), record box office returns and a growing list of awards, Parasita is also a global cultural phenomenon.
What resonates so deeply in Parasita? Arguably, this is an unpleasant and disturbing representation of human nature. Does the title perfectly sum up the plot? Characters suck on others to survive. However, the parasite Bong wants to reveal is not only found in strange objects or places; he is also alive in every human soul.
- All of Bong Joon-ho’s films explore social tensions not only in South Korea.
- But around the world.
- While many of his earlier works have taken place in sci-fi or fantasy contexts (Okja and Expresso do Amanha).
- Parasita is a more domestic drama.
- Centered on two families (each with four members) living in opposite worlds in Seoul.
- As the poor working family.
- Kim.
- Slowly infiltrates the home of the wealthy Park family.
- The film turns into humorous chaos and a possible disaster.
The problems of the Kim family, and you, parasite?Do they stand out in the film’s opening scene, as all four are seen in a depressing basement flooded with toxic clouds of fumigating street gas. The fate of the family begins to change when a friend of the eldest son, Ki-Woo (Woo-sik Choi), gives the family a suseok, a traditional Korean stone. Suseok seems to bring to the family the happiness, fortune and wealth they have long desired. However, in a crucial scene, the heavy stone rises to the surface of the water that floods the house, revealing that it was in fact wrong.
Does the moment coincide with the elaborate fraud of the Kim family?and says, “She keeps holding on to me. ” Stone is a symbol of parasitic desires attached to our souls.
The film shows how our desires tend to be more dangerous when they start to come true. Gradually we realize that the desires granted do not nourish the soul, they suck it. Towards the end of the film, it is the suseok, rightly, who throws Ki-Woo into a bloody puddle, echoing what Proverbs 27. 20 reveals of human nature: “Hell and the abyss never have enough, and man’s eyes are never satisfied. ?.
Are parasitic desires usually the result of comparison?A reality that Bong describes in a tangible way through a striking contrast between Kim’s residences and Park’s. The Oscar nomination for Best Production Design is well deserved; the houses in the film are characters in themselves.
As we are introduced to the Kim family, each scene descends to capture their difficulties, their accommodation in the basement forces the family to always look up, almost consolidating their place on the economic scale. a big house literally on a hill. To enter the residence, it is necessary to climb a staircase. The view of the park is not a tense look at a dirty urban street, but a vision of leisure outside, thanks to a huge floor to ceiling. Windows overlooking the green space of the field.
The greed of the Kim family is familiar to us, in part because we are bombarded daily with these contrasts through the position of social media based on comparison. It is appropriate for the opening scene to show the Kim brothers on their phone, seeking a good Addiction to the digital experience, like ours, fuels the insatiable appetite of the parasite of desire.
Yet in one of the movie’s great twists and turns, Bong confronts us with comparison insanity and destruction. The comparison game, what is better than who? It is useless and cyclical. And if being at the top of the stairs means others have to be knocked down, is it really worth the climb?
Finally, in Parasita it is not at all clear that the rich and the poor are linked to degrees of happiness. In the end, what seems to be a stark contrast between them and us reveal ourselves as artificial boundaries?We’re more similar than different. ? not in our external position, but certainly in our inner situation.
One of the ways Parasita annoys us is to refuse to offer the public clear protagonists and antagonists. Does the film (classified as “restricted” by language, violence and sexual content) confront us with raw reality?human beings, even “heroes,” have a profound propensity for evil. As Mike Cosper says, “it is easier to understand that we are sinners or saints than to recognize that we are a mixture of both. “
The Kim family believes that the top of the stairs offers a more honorable and moral life. As a result, Chung-sook (Hye-jin Jang), mother of the Kim clan, observes in the Park family: they are rich. “But at the end of the film, we realize that none of the families won the honor she was looking for. Whether up or down (literally in the film, which accentuates the reason for status up or down), the parasites of desire?you want more, better or different?they always hide, hungry as usual. Achievements and status apparently do not solve the central problem: the central parasite of our sinful nature. And the higher we go, the more we become entangled in sin.
Depravity is universal, as Parasita understands it, it is a dark message, but it creates the glorious hope of the Gospel, because just as depravity affects every step of the ladder, the salvation offered to us in Christ does the same. State in the sense of the world, we are also guilty in the eyes of God. No wealth, house or contracted employee can hide our sin from him. But the other side is also true: no matter how much we fall down the stairs of life, we will never be beyond the reach of God’s saving grace.
[i] NdT: Won in the categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Foreign Film and Best Original Screenplay.