Fascinating as it is, I regret that I lack a friend, or even an acquaintance, of South Korean origin, for after viewing Parasite (2019) I have a lot of questions that need answering, including such big ones as What did I miss here?
The poverty-stricken Kim family, living in the slums in the depths of Seoul, may be lacking in money and even food, but lacking in wit and the grasping of opportunity they are not, so when a chance to tutor a child of a nouveau-rich family leads to another opportunity within the same family, they move on it and capture the job – and then see more jobs within their grasp, if only they are a trifle clever about it.
Once the entire family abruptly finds itself working for a living, a little celebration breaks out when the employing family leaves for a holiday. Only then do they discover that parasites can have … competition. But when torrential rains move in, a family, now abruptly beset by an unexpected challenge, finds their own home has been destroyed in a most distressing fashion, leaving them with a question: what to do next?
Moving from farce to mystery to a disturbing look at the pressures of social conformance, the movie makes each major character count, even the child who cannot quite parse Morse code sufficiently to understand that sometimes parasites can be in distress. But some of the symbolism, rooted in modern South Korean culture, escapes me. I mean, the toilet squirting out the contents of the sanitary sewers was awesome, but does it mean the same thing to me as it might to a South Korean? And are we looking at circular parasitism?
My Arts Editor proclaimed herself fascinated and bewildered as to where the movie was headed at any particular moment, and, technically speaking, I felt it was spot-on – even the captioning was excellent. If you have an interest in genre-crossing movies, you should go see this one.
Recommended.
