Flee Circus

Rating: 8/10 (10 March 2020)

How courteous is the Japanese
He always says 'excuse it, please'
He walks into his neighbour's garden
And smise and says 'I beg your pardon'
He bows, and grins a little grin
And brings his hungry family in
He grins, and bows a little bow
'So sorry, this MY garden now'.
That verse by Ogden Nash, itself a satire, may well contain the nucleus of Parasite, a movie in which nothing is sacred and anything goes. I am unable to put my hand on my heart and agree with the Academy that it was the Best Picture of 2019 but I can say that it was far from the worst. Most viewers in the West, of course, were obliged to rely on subtitles to follow the story and while subtitles have never been a problem for me I always feel a slight sense of loss if a given piece of art is not written in my first language; if, for example, I am watching, say, Uncle Vanya, sitting next to a native Russian speaker, and the English translation is the finest possible I still feel that the native speaker is getting ten or twenty per cent more out of the play than I am via untranslatable nuances. So it was with Parasite but what remains is highly enjoyable.