Parasite

Parasite is an undeniably good movie. Bong Joon Ho made it with a meticulous attention to detail that rivals Hitchcock and a dedication to subtle symbolism that reminds me of the better works of Francis Ford Coppola. Be forewarned, however, that the enjoyment you get may be less from watching it and more from unravelling its intricacies in the days, or weeks, after.

Seemingly every choice made in Parasite’s construction is a deliberate one – all in service of the central themes of the movie. Coppola once discussed the thought process he put into selecting just the raincoat of Gene Hackman’s character in The Conversation and Parasite is just as detail oriented. The story revolves around two families: the Kims, a formerly middle class and now poor family, and the Parks, an “upper echelons of wealth” kind of rich family. They become intertwined as the movie unfolds and their status is repeatedly reflected in parallels of design. For example, the movie always shows characters arriving at the Park house by moving upward. Even inside the house, stairs are used to continue that idea of upward movement equating to status. The Kims, on the other hand, live in a semi-basement apartment, literally partially underground. The one time we see the Kims travel to their home, it is through an extended montage of them descending: down stairs, down sloping streets, passing under overpasses, and so on. The two family’s dwellings also have architectural elements that exist to draw useful parallels. For example, each family’s home has a window as a focal point of its living room area. The Kims’ looks out on a rundown alley where drunken barflies pee in the street. The Parks’ looks out on a beautifully manicured lawn.

Design isn’t the only place where careful choice has been made in how the story is being told. There are subtle moments to do with food, smells, alcohol brands, and even something as simple as the weather carries with it a multitude of meanings. Best of all, unlike many filmmakers with a societal critique to convey, these directorial choices don’t club you over the head with their message. They are just there, to be subconsciously taken in by the casual viewer and to be discovered and enjoyed by the dedicated cinephile.

I also like how the movie has a strong point of view but is still somehow open to multiple interpretations. It is fairly standard for this kind of politically aware movie to be rather direct with its metaphors as to not confuse the audience. Parasite doesn’t do this. The obvious interpretation is as a simple class critique, asking the audience to weigh the Kims against the Parks to answer the question of who really is the titular parasite. However, this isn’t the only way to see the film.

One reaction I found online described how the film can be seen as an exploration of harmony and discord. According to this person, harmony with nature is a concept with Confucian origins that still holds weight in Korean society today. This recontextualizes things that exemplify wealth, such as a manicured lawn, as things that exemplify discord with nature. To be harmonious, a Korean estate such as the Parks’ shouldn’t have a lawn but a traditional garden where landscaping is natural, simple, and unforced. Korean gardens also put a lot of importance in stones and their placement, which coincides with the important and recurring role a large scholar’s stone plays in Parasite’s plot. To drive this point home about harmony and its roots in the natural world, a massive rainstorm coincides with one of the movie’s biggest moments.

This harmony and discord reading also explains why the film holds no family, class, or group up as a hero as each, in their own way, lives in disharmony. An individualist might take this to mean that it is all about the choices of the individual, not the group to which they may belong, that determines if they live harmoniously or not. On the other hand, given the same material, a collectivist might take this to represent that the broader world is no longer in harmony, rendering all, both rich and poor, not good or evil but inevitable byproducts of their environment. This takes seemingly disparate actions from both families and finds their common ground. From the cultivated Western yard of the Parks to the lack of veneration shown to the scholar’s stone by the Kims, everyone in Parasite is reflecting disharmony.

Yet another interpretation puts the Parks not as adversaries for the Kims but as the aspirational goal that is their undoing. The Parks, in many ways, are naive and open with the Kims. It isn’t until the Kims’ relationship with the Parks, and the upward mobility that that represents, is challenged by a different family that the chain of events begin which leads to the story’s inevitable conclusion. Through this lens, the movie is about lobsters in a pot, always dragging each other down, with the Parks serving as both the means for escape and an example of the reward should one succeed. This aligns with a literal reading of the final monologue.

Or perhaps the title refers not to a person or people, but to an idea. It is the idea of hope in an unforgiving and undefeatable system that is the parasite. Believing you can better yourself eats you from the inside as life humbles you again and again and pours misery on you for not simply accepting your station. The Kims would never have ended up poor if they didn’t strive for greatness and fail in the events preceding the movie. The fate of several characters could be seen as being determined by their belief in, or rejection of, hope. Strivers are cut down and usurpers suffer an even worse fate.

These aren’t a definitive list of interpretations, either. If you watch the movie, you may come to your own conclusion. The broader point is that all of these readings have been put forward and, while I don’t find them all equally strong, they all have some validity. That these multiple takes can all find support in the text points to a key aspect of what makes this a great movie: it engages you intellectually. I was still thinking about it days and days after I watched it. I have enjoyed probably an hour or more of reading other people’s reactions and watching video essays that dissect the minute details of its construction, like how the inclusion of Ram-Don, a made up half ramen half udon dish, is actually a clever microcosmic story on culture and class. This also, amusingly enough, reveals one of the film’s few weaknesses for a Western audience. Namely, that while visual metaphors that use architecture to connote class are fairly universal, there are many more choices that feel like they ought to mean something but to an audience unfamiliar with Korean culture and history they are just befuddling.

For example, in addition to the parallels between the Parks and the Kims, there are other parallels as well. Kim Ki Woo gets a job as a tutor after being referred by a friend who was himself a tutor, but is leaving to study abroad. The friend fell in love with the girl he was tutoring, but he is in college and she is in high school, so he is waiting for her to graduate before pursuing. Ki Woo then ends up in exactly the same situation. This is too blatant a choice to not mean anything, especially given the way the rest of the movie is constructed, but this dynamic doesn’t resolve itself through action leading me to believe its existence is meant to have meaning unto itself. Frustratingly, I don’t know enough about Korean culture to know what that meaning is. There is another parallel involving patriarchs who become trapped by circumstances as the ownership of a house changes hands. Again, obvious structural similarities but without clear meaning.

This cultural disconnect also leads to potential mistakes in interpretation. One piece of criticism I consumed on Parasite discussed the various ways in which the Parks “play” at being poor in contrast to the Kims’ actual poverty. An example they gave was the Park boy’s love of camping. However, at least from my Western perspective, camping is not playing at being poor. Sure, you sleep in a tent and cook on a single burner stove, but that is just a means for gaining access to nature in an unadulterated way. I would never have read an interest in camping as being something loaded with class meaning, especially since people of a wide variety of socio-economic levels all go camping around where I live. In Korea it might be different. There may be cultural associations with camping I don’t know. There might be a subtlety in contrasting the Parks’ upper class mode of camping with the Kims’ lower class day to day living that I did not pick up on. These pieces of cultural disconnect, especially in seemingly significant moments that I could not correctly contextualize, did cause me to be taken out of the movie from time to time.

Lastly, Parasite did not leave me in a state of awe when I got to the end credits. It just didn’t give me that indescribable special feeling you get at the end of watching something really, really good. Maybe I came in with too high expectations. Or maybe just the wrong expectations. Everyone said to go in knowing as little as possible, which I dutifully did, but even in giving that advice a certain expectation is being set. I also feel that that sort of warning was unwarranted. There is a twist, of sorts, that changes the tone and direction of the movie but it isn’t so amazingly well done or clever that it needs to be a closely guarded secret. It isn’t The Six Sense or The Usual Suspects. I went in expecting something truly wild to turn the movie on its head and the second act surprise isn’t really that.

Whether or not it was caused by my expectations going in, when I finished Parasite I had more of a “huh, interesting” moment than a “damn, that was amazing” moment. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie, far from it. It’s just that Parasite’s reputation is that of a modern classic, with some saying it will eventually be ranked among the all-time greats. I was expecting to be blown away and I simply wasn’t. Going off of immediate reaction, I would have said Knives Out is a better movie. With time, though, Parasite has grown on me. The more I digest it, the more I warm to its quality. It is a really good movie. It just might be more of a slow burn than a powerful punch as far as its entertainment value is concerned.

Would Recommend: If a message driven foreign language film sounds like something intriguing and intellectually engaging.

Would Not Recommend: If you are looking for something light, relaxing, and full of happy vibes.