Woah

Rating: 9/10 (23 February 2020)

After watching Parasite, it's hard to describe what I felt when "Kevin" finished writing the letter for his father. The film itself is entertaining to watch, it keeps you thinking and when you look for the deeper meaning within, you find a hard theme to display on a screen yet done brilliantly in Parasite.
In my opinion the movie is a direct metaphor for dreams, and even for the concept of the "American Dream". In the film, the "Kim" family is struggling from the beginning, they have dreams, especially Ki-Woo (Kevin) and his sister (Ki-Jeong) to go to college. When Kevin heads out to his job interview with the Parks, he tells his family that he doesn't think of the forgery of the documents as a crime. He is just getting these documents before time, because he will go to college. His sister also seems like she wanted to go to college and seems frustrated that she couldn't because of their situation. At the end of the film, Kevin imagines himself overcoming and finally having money after he went to college. He then would be able to buy the house where his dad would still be trapped in the basement room. The sad part about this is that Kevin really thinks he will be able to save his father, but because of what has happened, he won't be able to.
An interesting metaphor used inside the film is how the levels in the different houses represent the social classes. For example, to get to the Park's house the Kims had to walk up a hill, and to get back to their house they had to walk back down a long way. Even inside the Park's house this can be seen with the hidden basement room, in which one of the "parasites" lives.
The film for me started out almost as a comedy, all of the sequence in which the family works together to fire the Park's workers in order for them to be hired is great and I really had fun watching it. Where it all changes is when the two "parasites" face off against each other to stay on the surface (literally and figuratively), while the losers are thrown back inside the basement. From this point the whole movie changes dramatically and it all goes downhill, as represented by the flooding of their apartment. What really seems interesting to me is how when the Parks were at their highest point; dining and drinking acting like they own the place is when their downfall begins. This probably represents how in many cases the social class lines are set and those below don't belong above.
Mr. Parker is the one who is above all the others, he is the man of the house. In two occasions Mr. Kim tells Parker that he loves his wife, to which the first time Mr. Parker responds, "we'll call it love". This probably shows that in truth he doesn't love her and the only thing that he really loves is well, money and power. In an intimate scene between the two, at a point Mr. Parker looks even uncomfortable adding more to why I believe he doesn't love her at all.
When the Kims first meet the Parks they think between themselves that they are nice people and look at them as their equals. This all changes in the scene where they become trapped underneath the table and overhear Mr. Park telling his wife how Mr. Kim smells like radishes with great disgust, as if he weren't even human at all. This greatly upsets Mr. Kim, as if this smell makes him less than them. Later, this explains the reason for him killing Mr. Park in the final act of the film.
Overall, the film is complete and a realistic portrait of a struggle between classes and a commentary on how not everyone can accomplish their dreams because of how our society is built. It has various moods that I honestly really liked, from the comedic, to the dark and psycho parts of the film. The thing that this film has made me think the most about though, is the dreams part, because that can come like a brick to the face, to know that what you want the most in the world might not come to you.