Detritivores

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2020)

Oscars best picture, Cannes winner, lauded and acclaimed, and a good and engaging film from beginning to ending. Good in most respects but mainly it has a catchy hook. An engaging premise. A peculiarity in its treatment of subject and theme.
I would not agree that such novelty of idea makes, by itself, for an award winning finished film and certainly in this case I am fairly confident that the film as a whole is much less than the "vigor" of its animating conceit; it's 'reason to be' (made).
Ancient issues of human inequality of life invested with a catchy and up to date arrangement is a neat idea, hardly groundbreakingly original in world cinema, but it's a neat idea.
Essentially a pursuit, in dramatic film, of the degree to which "upstairs-downstairs" conditions the life choices, circumstances and outlooks of people caught on opposite sides, how it warps and differentiates lives lived to ultimately decide whole human lives without their own input.
This "have and have nots" and "how the other half lives" drama is not new and indeed it has precursors in western and eastern film and broader fiction.
The manner of this drama is in two stages: firstly the ingratiating "invasion" of the rich households retinue by the Kim family; eventually completely usurping the established retainers and then secondly the heightening of the old household staff reappearing and ultimately revolting against their disposition; all transpiring almost entirely under the noses, and beneath the awareness of the "upstairs" 'haves', the Park family.
That's it. That's the best idea. The enervating treatment of an old dramatic theme of rich and poor.
It's a good film in its runtime: reasonably written except in certain unbelievable characters and relationships; an insistence on a highly risky full assault on employment opportunities by the Kim family that I baulked at whilst watching; and a missed opportunities to illuminate the 'host' family of 'upstairs': the Parks.
The acting was usually reliable although few actors were required to display much range in their performance. A major problem was scenes of drinking, 'drunk' acting was unconvincing.
Direction and editing were certain if uninspiring. Technical virtues included a sympathetic use of sound design and a well chosen pallet of colours plus an interesting main location at the Park's house.
Certain limitations in writing include the Kim daughters character, who I found utterly unconvincing and unbelievabile as presented: she is intelligent, resourceful, outgoing, manipulate, skilled and also beautiful, young, female and single.....and yet none of this seems remotely relevant to the young woman we meet at the films inception...was she being kept in a freeze dried bag until the day before the narrative opens? How can she exist in her environment without these character details having very pertinently pressed upon her life?
As the film proceeds she serves to help other family characters but otherwise she is a doll in a costume after that.
The Kim mother is barely recognizable as a full human character with genuine characteristics and a independent life. Her marriage is seldom testified to, is it good to bad, or bad to good, how do they feel to each other and about each other, what little closenesses do they share unique to them....I dunno.
Compared to the Kim men the two females are badly nourished as characters and conspicuously so in the case of the daughter.
The Park's family hints having real human people in it but by the end of the film even the husband, who seems quite human at times, is left uninteresting and unconsidered. The idea that they have a real life with skeletons in cupboards was absent. Only the phrasing of the husband to relate about his main encounters with the Kim's father to his wife, with phrases about "crossing the line" and "subway people" seemed to expand their humanity.
There are 3 marriages featured in the film plus a teenage relationship and only the third and final couple, of the displaced housekeeper, actually seem to have a "lived in" married life that feels like it proceeds the story concerning the film.
The full attack upon maximum employment by the Kim family seemed to me to be an extremely ungainly insistence for the film to impose on my disbelief but it had to do it to develop it's plot line.
Finally, in passages the film hints at metaphorical depths such as its talking about "light", it's use of rain storms and catastrophic floods, underground dwellings and the rock "scholars stone". These metaphors interact with the upper class airy people and the ground dwelling lower class people: but here I would have appreciated some 'second unit' type environmental photography to tie the human story with the metaphorical levels with the films physical reality. I'd have accepted an extension of the runtime to achieve this extra footage on the edit.
In summation I rate at a lowish 6/10 and I would reserve my agreement that this film deserves such rewards as it has garnered for what is basically a neat idea for a particular treatment of standard themes and subject matter which is amiably delivered on screen but suffers from varied failures in execution in the writing.