Movie: Parasite
Director: Bong Joon Ho
” Individuals were all right, she said to herself, lots of them, but it was this rigid system that kept people from knowing each other…” ~ Ellen Wilkinson, Clash.
For far too long believes Slavoj Zizek the concept of class struggle has been severely misunderstood and ludicrously oversimplified. Parasite by Bong Joon Ho does quite a fair amount to ensure that it is time people reassembled their notion of struggle in the modern world.
The most impeccable part of the movie gyrates around the characters. A rich man has not been portrayed as an all-devouring monster against a poor maid who is meek and docile, destined to suffer. The director deconstructs these conventional, fundamentally erroneous ideas of absolute good and evil as they appear dated in the modern world. The fight according to the director is not between the rich and the poor anymore. It is not a battle to reclaim the lost throne of glory. The rich has far transgressed the realm of evident suffering. It is now a struggle of survival between the poor and the poor, to stay afloat and dream of a distant unattainable utopia.
Deceits, revelations, and machinations surround the narrative of Parasite. There are some beautifully shot sequences, especially the ones where the Kim family is sequentially executing their schemes in order to assume control over the wealthy Park family. The operatic background score in one such sequence made the sequence skillfully theatrical adding elements of simultaneous surprise and shock. These scenes would also question the conscience of certain viewers who are by this time rooting for the Kim family in their sly schemes.
One would be reminded of films like Us by Jordan Peele and The Platform by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia for obvious reasons. There are profound metaphors in the movie enhancing the storytelling process and the adroit Cinematography of Hong Kyung Pyo becomes the spectacular icing on an almost flawless cake. The performances of Song Kang-ho; Lee Sun-Kyun; Cho Yeo-Jeong; Choi Woo-Shik; Park So-Dam; Lee Jung-Eun; Jang Hye-Jin were commendable making Parasite a jigsaw puzzle full of emotional predicaments.
The title itself reminds us of the abyss of Nietzsche looking straight back at us making us question our extremely privileged existence around ‘unwanted’ insects, a never-ending fight often cursed with the gift of ‘reason’ and ‘knowledge’.
