A poor Korean family: father Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), mother, son and daughter. They live in a semi-basement, next to the window of which someone constantly urinates, they sit without work and, in order to earn at least something, they collect pizza delivery boxes. At the same time, they cannot do even such a simple thing normally: a quarter of the boxes turn out to be defective.
At some point, the son was lucky: his friend was going to go abroad and offered to teach English instead of him with his daughter from a very wealthy family of a businessman Pak. The sister helps the guy to forge documents about education, the first lesson went well, so he was hired.
But the guy didn’t hesitate. He saw that the family was growing a hooligan younger son, who draws peculiar pictures, and advised the owner of the house, Pak, to hire an “art therapy specialist.” Of course, under the guise of this specialist, he represents his sister, who hangs so many noodles on the ears of the hostess of the house that she is simply delighted – well, wow, what an advanced girl will be raising her son.
And then everything went like in a fairy tale about a turnip: the daughter, with a deft and very mean maneuver, forced the family to fire the driver, and instead take her father, after which they, too, with a deft and also very mean maneuver, forced the Pakovs to get rid of their devoted housekeeper-cook, who I have worked in this house for many years. Of course, they introduced their mother to the role of housekeeper.
Now the whole family works in this house. The packs somehow don’t like the situation very much, but they, being very well-mannered and polite people, endure and don’t mind. However, they have no idea that this is all one family. And the cheerful family roams more and more: once, when the Packs are leaving for the day, these four settled in the mansion like at home, began to drink the owner’s expensive alcohol and began to imagine that they live in such a luxurious house. However, at the same time, they found out that not only Packs live in this house …
***
This film by South Korean director Pong Joon-ho became one of the main events of the Cannes Film Festival 2019 – he won the Palme d’Or there. Criticism of the new film, with extremely rare exceptions, simply praised it to the skies.
I decided to watch this movie – I wonder why such a hype. True, the critics also praised the “Beach Bum”, and it turned out to be really concrete junk. But I decided that, as usual, it’s best to form your own opinion.
So, “Parasite” is a film, fortunately, quite deserving of attention. Moreover, it is noteworthy, despite a certain variety of genres: it all starts as a black-humor comedy, then slowly turns into an outright farce and quite unexpectedly ends with a slasher.
But multi-genre – it is bad in the hands of people who do not know what to do with it, and Bong Joon-ho works quite well with this.
It is curious that the director in the film does not at all determine who exactly – a poor or a rich family – he considers parasites. It seems that his sympathies are equidistant. The poor family obviously parasitizes on the rich, and the rich one looks somewhat ridiculous with its refinement, habit of inserting anglicisms into speech and frank inability to resist this swarm of arrogant aliens who the devil knows what they are doing in their house.
All this is filmed very effectively: the infernal poverty of the wretched housing of the Ki-taek family with its domestic disasters, the absolutely amazing beauty and spaciousness of the interiors of the Pak dwelling. At the same time, it is very interesting to show how poor Koreans rise from their apartment to the mansion located on a hill along a bunch of all sorts of stairs and then slide down them into their shack.
There is a lot of fun in this film: the poor are striking in their ingenuity, resourcefulness and arrogance, and the rich look quite infantile and weak-willed – even the head of the Park family, who seems to be a tough businessman. But Bublik and I had an assumption that he was more like some kind of major – the son of a rich dad who simply transferred his business to his son.
Ki-taek’s dad was excellently played by a very famous actor Song Kang-ho: he played in four films with this director, and I remember this actor from a very cool picture “The Good, the Bad, the Strange.”
And among the other members of the poor family, the daughter Ki-jeong (Pak So-dam) really liked – a spectacular girl who perfectly bred the hostess.
Well, from the Pak family, I really liked both the husband and wife – very rich, very gullible and, unfortunately, completely defenseless against the invasion of parasites.
Good movie, I liked it. Unusual, original, author’s, slightly crazy. I can’t say anything about the main Cannes prize, although I know that at least Almodovar’s Pain and Glory was nominated there, and this, in my opinion, is a noticeably stronger film, but it’s generally up to the festival jury, who and why they should be awarded .
But that this film is really good and interesting – I’m not going to argue with that. And it also has a good aftertaste: you kind of look and somehow “well, it’s funny, yes, but nothing special,” but it remains in memory and its individual moments are then constantly remembered. This is the hallmark of a good movie. I will not pronounce panegyrics, but the film is worthy.
Parasite movie meaning / Gisaengchung
Directed by: Bong Joon-ho Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sung-kyun, Cho Ye-jung, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, Jung Ji-seo, Jung Hyun-jun, Lee Jong-eun, Park Seo-joon
Budget: $12M, Worldwide Grossing: $90M
Black humor tragicomedy, South Korea, 2019, 131 min.