Multilayered portrayal of the real Korea

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 2020)

This is a movie about a class struggle in South Korea, like what movie "Us" attempts to do but done properly. It is a stark reminder of what true living standards for most South Koreans look like, and its realism is very painful. Few are aware of the fact that up to the 1980s, South Korea was in fact more impoverished than North Korea, and it was only late that the situation reversed with famines of the 90s etc, but many people still live miserable lives, and situation is very similar to that in China, where a few got gloriously rich but the urban masses still live in bug infested cheap dwellings.
Some crafty members of this underclass manage to con contemptuous rich man into employing them as his servants. For many Asians smell is a way to express utter contempt, and this is often directed against the white people, who, being able to process milk, smell "like butter" and are seen in rac ist light as unclean, but the same rac ist contempt is directed towards the poor. The poor accept these valuations and fight for the crumbles, like roaches in the dark, but in life and death situations, resentment might boil up and the contempt might cost the rich their empty heads.
The movie paints a sad picture of modern East Asian societies, with many subtle points, criticizes their culture and emulation of the America, with a few cruel but precise strokes. The sheer talent of the Korean filmmaker, but also the fact that West likes movies from foreign countries that are self bashing, allowing the worst condescension rooted in colonialism that failed miserably in East Asia to thrive, one more reason to cheer this slightly overrated movie.