"Parasite": Joon-ho Bong's Dark Masterpiece Is Everything "Joker" Isn't
The last movie I saw, Todd Phillips's "Joker," was inflated by many into a treatise on our winner-take-all economic system (though not by me). This week "Parasite," the 2019 Cannes Palme d'Or winner, accomplishes that aim, and brilliantly. Unlike "Joker," "Parasite" not a superhero backstory. It's not even American. But the Korean director Joon-ho Bong, who co-wrote the script, has made a brilliant, universal black comedy that says everything about the cruelty of class inequality.
It starts with four-member Kim family, long on smarts but short on cash, barely surviving in a dank basement apartment in a poor neighborhood in Seoul. In spite of their work and academic credentials, all the Parks are unemployed until a stroke of luck lands the college-age son, Kim Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi), a lucrative job tutoring the high-school age daughter of a rich tech executive named Park (Sun-kyung Lee). Soon Ki-Woo's sister, Kim Ki-jung (So-dam Park), a talented graphic designer, is teaching art to the Park's son, in the guise of her brother's acquaintance. Realizing the pot of gold they've discovered in the naive, vacuous Park family, the Kim parents then get themselves hired as the family's chauffeur and housekeeper, again as unrelated workers.
Looking for Free Wifi in "Parasite"The Kims' brilliant plan proceeds without a hitch until the discovery of a disturbing secret in the bowels of the lavish modernist Park home. Then, just as quickly as it succeeded, their clever scheme unravels. In the film's shockingly violent denouement, neither family escapes unharmed or unchanged. What emerges from the catastrophe is a stark truth: economic inequality is a disaster for rich and poor alike.
"Parasite" owes a debt not to incoherent movies like "Joker" but to last year's Kore-eda film "Shoplifters." Like the Shibatas, Kore-eda's family of unrelated but caring grifters, the Kims are economic losers living at the margins of a rich, uncaring society. But unlike the Shibatas, the Kims are ruthless in their pursuit of money and position, and not above using violence to achieve their aims. In "Parasite" the Kims emerge bloodied but scrappy, while their victims the Parks are vanquished. This reversal of fortunes cries out for a sequel, and I hope Bong makes it.