Parasite, a spoiler filled discussion

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2019)

Parasite
Hollywood Theater
11/11/19
I've seen Parasite three times in five days. I think something may be wrong with me. It's just so good, even after repeat viewings the high-tension scenes still hold so many thrills. Bong Joon-ho has made a perfect film. I've seen it so many times I've memorized the characters lines so I can watch them almost the entire time without having to read the subtitles, this made the movie even more enjoyable. I just wanted to write some aimless thoughts about the movie, pretty much conversing with myself here, but feel free to read. Oh, and we definitely get to major spoilers so avoid this if you haven't seen the movie.
Yeo-jeong Jo, the performer who plays Mrs. Park is such a gem. Her hysteria and earnest simplicity make her a joy to watch. Her face is so expressive and bright, there is a scene where she is walking up a flight of stairs and is witnessing her maid have a pretty disgusting coughing fit and the look of sheer disgust and revulsion on her face is so hilarious. She is the introductory cornerstone to the relatability and identifiable nature of the ultra-rich Park family.
My favorite character is still Mr. Kim played by regular Bong hitter Kang-ho Song. The way Bong directs his performers seems to be relaxed as he's said Song would do multiple takes and each performance would be wildly different until he settled into what they felt was right. This proved to be a real challenge for editor Jinmo Yang, who would have to composite different takes into each other to make them work. For example, Song may have had an over the top take, but Jo may have had her best take of that same scene. Yang would digitally edit the scene to meld them and get the best performances from both actors. It's seamless to us, but to Yang that's a lot of pressure. Personally, this was cool to learn because we recently had to do this on a short film I worked on, good to know larger productions do this too. It's fascinating to watch Parasite with that in mind because Song's Mr. Kim is such an eccentric character and watching the other actors react to him is a treat. He's the least predictable of the entire family and seeing his various reactions and how he absorbs what's going on around him is captivating. During this screening I really took in his expressions and his motives for the actions he takes at the end of the film. They really clicked and made sense to me this time around. The way Song processes pain in his face is deftly subtle and minute.
That pain we see paints a much larger dark mark across the underlying themes of the film. The title Parasite doesn't take a genius to decode. The poverty-stricken Kim family is very much in a symbiosis with the Parks. The Kims are driving them around, tutoring their children, cleaning their house and cooking their meals while Mr. Park's salary alone pays all four members of the Kim family. Which is insane to think about, that distribution of wealth is ridiculous. There is a line from Mrs. Kim, she says Mrs. Park is nice because she is rich, and how if she were rich, she would be nice too. She also likens money to an iron, smoothing out the creases. Which is an apt analogy, sure we all have heard money cannot buy happiness and images of the sad billionaire conjure up in our minds. We can say that money doesn't buy happiness, but money does buy us breathing room, it sands the sharp edge of reality down. When you're broke and down and out, everything seems like a threat. It seems like one strong wind, or in the case of Parasite, one literal storm can obliterate any stability you might start to create or what little you had to begin with anyways.
A beautiful, heavy rainstorm is admired from the top of the hill where the Parks live, only to completely flood and destroy the semi-basement where the Kim's live. All that gorgeous rainwater flows downhill from the mansions and directly into the slums, consuming the entire Kim apartment. The next morning in the car Mrs. Park is mindlessly chatting away on the phone saying how much of a blessing the rain was and how clean everything is, she also takes notice of her driver, Mr. Kim's, unpleasant smell. Unbeknownst to her, 8 hours previously he and his children were neck deep in flood water mixed with raw sewage trying to salvage family photographs and prized possessions, all of which fit in a single box. The most striking shot in the film is Mr. Kim's daughter calmly smoking a cigarette, perched on top of a toilet violently spewing black filth. Cut back to the luxury Mercedes, Mrs. Park rides in, pinching her nose and rolling down a window, only for Mr. Kim to almost lose it. His face deftly registers exhaustion, anger, jealousy, and pain, the emotions revolve around his face like clockwork. Parasite messes with perspectives of reality and how your wealth measures how close to reality you really are. Mrs. Park isn't a villain, her wealth just acts as a warm, protective blanket of ignorance to the suffering around her.
The tragic comedy and irony of Parasite goes even deeper. As the ending events of the film lead to Ki-taek (Mr. Kim) going into hiding, while his son Ki-woo, and wife have both now caught legal reps. Ki-woo writes a letter his father will never receive. He vows to buy the mansion his father is hiding out in. The bitter reality has me asking what kind of opportunities will a person with no formal education, no trained skills, and a criminal record have? What shot will this kid get? The friends who joined me at the screening were hopeful for Ki-woo's future, I however was not as optimistic. Yet the most compelling element of Parasite is that with the world it creates we really don't know what the future may have in store for the Kim family. It's a self-contained, grounded yet fascinating and strange universe we get to inhabit for a two-hour segment, and a world I will continue to revisit many more times.