Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a very rare film. It is timely, it seems to have emerged from the deep psychology of a culture in crisis, but without exhibiting cheap didacticism or stereotypes. It presents characters who are formed by their milieu but not wholly inscribed by it, individuals whose actions are, in the Brechtian sense, "typical" of their class position, but aren't without conflicting desires, regret, ambivalence. Parasite is both about the untenable hyper-division between the rich and poor, and the fact that a coming revolution -- lining all those one-percenters against the wall, as it were -- would be a sad, ugly business. 

"I would be nice too if I were rich." That's how the perpetually cranky Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) responds to her husband Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) when he comments that the Parks, the wealthy family they are conning, are actually very nice people. Their son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) is connected with the Park family by an old school friend, Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon). This is the first moment that Parasite introduces not only class disparity but the basic lie of meritocracy. Ki-woo was the best English student in their class, but could not afford to go to college. Nevertheless, with Min-hyuk's recommendation, Ki-woo is employed by Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong) to serve as the English tutor for their daughter Da-hye (Jung Ji-so).

Through various machinations, Ki-woo's entire family is eventually employed by the Parks. This process is rather schematic, and can lead the viewer to expect a somewhat forumlaic black comedy wherein each of the family members is discovered in turn as an impostor. What actually happens is much more intriguing. Entry into the Parks' world introduces a heightened class awareness in the Kim family. They are all, for the most part, given the chance to excel within their chosen positions, something none of them has really had before. But this poses a question. Why do the Parks have such a comfortable life while the Kims live in squalor? What makes these people better?

Ki-woo and Da-hye begin a relationship, even as Ki-woo knows that it cannot last. Ki-taek develops complex feelings toward his employers, taking a not-so-secret shine to the Mrs., and trying to be a bit too familiar with Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun). And when a major revelation places the Kims, especially Chung-sook, in a precarious position where they might sympathize with another poor couple in desperate straits, Chung-sook instead decides to try and gain leverage over them, with horrible results. 

It is no accident that the relationship between the Parks and the Kims begins with the children. They are the least inculcated into rigid class definitions, so there is the possibility that they can see each other as equals. But Mr. Park knows immediately that Mr. Kim is a poor man. When he thinks Ki-taek cannot hear, he tells his wife that his driver smells like a boiled rag, the sort of smell that only old homeless people have. This is the point at which, despite all his efforts and goodwill, Ki-taek knows that he will never belong to this world, even as a servant.

"I would be nice too if I were rich." Chung-sook's words resonate as a kind of statement of purpose, but Bong shows us that even having contact with the sort of niceness that the Parks represent is enough to bring out the meanness in the Kims -- selfishness and ultimately murderous instincts that the rich can sublimate or abstract away into harsh monetary policy or job cuts. It's not only a question of who gets to keep their hands clean and whose must get irredeemably dirty. It's the fact that violence, in its many forms, begets violence, but only certain forms of violence are available to certain class positions.

The title, Parasite, is never literally explained in the film. I like the fact that this English title is easily misread as "paradise," a play on both the imagined perfection of the life of the wealthy, and the post-revolutionary promise of a workers' paradise. But more than this, I think that Bong means to show that it's not just the Kims infiltrating the Parks' home (which of course has already been compromised), but the Parks penetrating the Kims' own psyches, burrowing into their sense of identity and entitlement. 

Some have compared Parasite to a darker version of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters, but the film I think Parasite most resembles is Kurosawa's masterpiece High and Low. That film depicted the futility of class resentment and the basic nobility of the rich, even though its characters had to go through various psychological calisthenics to arrive there. But Parasite ups the ante, because the idea of a smoothly functional society is no longer plausible, or desirable. Put another way, what happens when the threat is internal, when the call, so to speak, is coming from inside the house? Parasite is the prelude to what, in its own universe, looks like a senseless killing. But in fact, the payback has just begun.