A cruel allegory for the truth of society

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 2019)

At the beginning of the close to the real life segment, is a very common introduction technique in Korean films. The long, slow shot passes through the cramped living space on the ground floor, and the characters are drawn one by one. In the cluttered and narrow semi-basement, the plot of searching for network signals and pizza boxes soon leads the viewer smoothly into the narrative atmosphere of life. The combination of deliberate camera speed and quick message delivery is so precise that it has proven the power of director bong joon-ho.
When stepping into the mansion that moment, "parasites" and the real story gradually away, but into the structure and framework of social fable. That doesn't mean the director has given up on story and suspense, though. It's certainly not the freehand brushwork of burning, which won critical acclaim last year but lost popularity, but it's similar to the metaphors and hints in snowpiercingly, and even to the themes of class and destiny. An undetected basement, like that set by many science fiction works, becomes a space device that isolates the class and tests humanity.
The passage about family education can naturally get heated discussion from domestic audiences who are in the middle of anxiety. The depiction of high-asset families in the film is a kind of deliberate label misreading, which makes all members look silly and indifferent, which is obviously not true. But the director quickly deflects the viewer's confusion with exquisite technical expertise. First of all, the suspense and conflict in the script are constantly pushed forward, which makes the audience hardly pay attention to the serious injury in the life picture, which also becomes an important evidence to question its commercial genre. But I have to admit that this is the subtlety of the script, every character has realized their own appearance, deduction, transformation and account, every props given to the camera, whether stone, secret door, tea table or induction lamp, have been effectively used, become an important force to promote the story.
What is exquisite is the scene itself. The three important locations of poor families, rich people's villas and underground secret rooms are all arranged in a very real and rich way. The seemingly random close-ups can accurately present the emotions of each scene and the differences between each other. The stylization of the scene also serves as a metaphor for the theme, just like the "strange smell" that the host keeps saying, which is the smell of poverty and the significant difference of different living conditions. It brings out the heart of separation hidden under the surface of kindness, builds up estrangement and hatred, and finally promotes the explosion of the ending.
Of course, technical sophistication was not enough to get the jury's approval. The emotional tension at the heart of the film comes from the characters' examination of their own lives, from the warmth and kindness that cannot dissolve the estrangement, from the tears in the eyes of a poor father as he looks back at his home in the flood, and from the tragic conflict facing the family of four after a brief period of joy. The film also jumped out of the suspense genre, with some depth to cause thinking. The mislabeling of the high class is also highlighted in these passages, which is an unavoidable wound in the film.
But like snow train, bong joon-ho has always been reluctant to disrupt the plot with lyricism and pauses. This preserves the tension and integrity of the story, but it can also hurt the meaning and attitude that the fable itself hopes to convey.
Butler's rainy night visit to the line and joy and sadness both before and after contrast so bright, even fantasy is over the boy out of the warmth of the segment, the film to be presented by the split, opposition and despair has carefully through setting suspense infiltrated the viewer's heart, it's almost no moralizing paragraph, but through the story of extremes, is like a knife cut the surface of society, will be more deep vein and the body.
When the story is over, who lives in a dark room and who travels in the sun like an insect, everyone may have found the answer. The reflection and emotion gained from the fable can also provide richer support for the following life choices.