Director: Bong Joon-ho
Screenwriter: Bong Joon – ho, Han Jin-won
Cinematography: Hong Kyung-pyo
(Source: Wikipedia)
I’ve heard a lot about Parasite last since it won an Oscar, and a lot of other awards around the world. Some of my friends, and teachers were also praising it but I couldn’t find the time. It was worth the wait. When I first watched the trailer, I thought it was about petty conflicts between a rich house-woman, and the help staff coming into her house or the teacher coming to help her children. I was soo wrong. The trailer indeed hides a lot but still makes you want to watch the movie. It is about a family of 4, who manages to get jobs as housekeeper, chauffeur, and teachers (both son and daughter) without the family they work for not knowing they are related. At the end of very unfortunate events, the daughter ends up dead, the father kills the father of the family and dissolves into thin air, the son nearly loses his mind from brain damage, and fortunately mother is alive. The acting, the scenes, and most importantly the message is astonishing.
The acting was really good, one actor who took my attention was Park Myung-hoon. He was the old housekeeper’s husband, who lived in the attic for approximately 4 years. The face he made when he was hitting the lamp’s button with his nose, he looked so mad and so scary. The anger, the dedication was pouring out of his eyes. It looked horrible. I got really afraid when I saw that. Plus, the face he made when he walked to the garden with a knife. He looked like a total psychopath. Even though he didn’t speak much, his face spoke a thousand words. The acting of all the actors when he stabbed the daughter-teacher and the chaos which came after that was also really good. The screams, the rich family’s mother’s unemotional, traumatized face… They were all so good. It affected me a lot.
I really liked the scenes. It pleased my eyes, but also I was shocked how they could capture a moment so perfectly. One of those scenes was the flood scene. It felt so real, indeed it seemingly was real: the streets they were shooting were flooded with water and people swimming, trying to walk in water… They were great scenes and I was amazed at how well the production team designed them. Plus, the contrast between low and high-income households was showed very successfully. Low-income families lost their everything in the flood while the rich family’s mother woke up to a sunny day in her perfectly fine house. I also want to talk about a scene that I liked very much. When the family’s teacher-daughter went to their flooded house, she sat on the toilet which had which had sewer liquid coming out of it. She sat on that dirty toilet, the grounds were flooding with sewer liquid too; and she smoked a cigarette. I didn’t know what to make of that scene, but it was cool that she didn’t freak out, she didn’t cry but she was rather calm. It reminded me that I should be calm even though I’m not in such a bad situation.
I liked the message given. The movie is about how some people of the society are seen as “parasites”, especially low-income families. They are seen as people who doesn’t work, who doesn’t produce, who doesn’t mean anything for the society. They are seen as a burden to the society, since the government usually supports them. This situation is seen in the movie; the old-housekeeper’s husband, and the family’s dad, both of them hid in the attic, living a parasitic life. They ate the house’s food bought by the adults living in the house, they used their place, they were like “parasite”s. They were a burden to the house unknown to the residents themselves.