The Pleasures and Limits of “Parasite”

Parasite arrived in South African theatres with a strong reputational backing. It won the Palme d’Or, the highest honour at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Korean film to do so. It’s grossed over $100 million (in comparison, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman made $93 million worldwide last year). And, not insignificantly, Leon van Nierop has been advocating passionately for the movie for weeks, encouraging viewers to see it once, and once again while it’s still in theatres.

It’s definitely an entertaining movie, and, if it were in English, there’d be very little about it that would be niche or unappealing to a mass audience. In fact, my friends and I went to see it at the upstairs Ster Kinekor movies at Brooklyn Mall, not at Cinema Nouveau, where it was expected to play. The movie is in Korean throughout, with English subtitles, and is, I think, every bit as enjoyable to an English-speaking audience as to a Korean one.

To describe it is far simpler than most reviewers make it sound, and the trick is just not to reveal the particulars of the plot. It’s a class comedy, that turns into a class horror-thriller, that ends more or less as a class tragedy, or tragicomedy. It follows a poor family of four — father, mother, brother, sister — who insinuate themselves as unrelated high-level specialist servants (a chauffeur, a housekeeper, a tutor, and a therapist) into the household of a wealthy family of four, also father, mother, brother, and sister. The rhetorical and behavioural flourishes they employ, their extravagantly fabricated backstories, their very simulation of belonging to the higher echelons of cultured society is one of the movie’s greatest pleasures, and also its subject.

From the beginning, the writer and director, Bong Joon-ho (who previously made Snowpiercer and Okja), spins the idea through his movie that there is indeed an essential difference between the often-regarded Haves and Have Nots. And that difference isn’t one of divine right or natural ability, or even really moral standing or just rewards; the difference is psychological. The difference is that people already living in the comforts, pleasures, and powers afforded by wealth believe in their ability to achieve, in their chances of getting even more than they already have. To act as though you belong among them to is give the air of believing that you deserve all the luxuries they enjoy. People who live in want, who lack some of those comforts and dignities — and lack a whole lot of that power — are dogged by Fortune and Fate, by the believe that even tenacious hard work can fall short, and that once you’ve moved up in life, chances are the next direction to head is back down.

Bong shows it in the unhesitating ruthlessness with which his working-class characters work to undermine and (sometimes literally) beat down their competition. He shows it in the poor father’s fatalist philosophy, expressed quietly one gloomy evening to his son, that there’s no use making any plans to fix a tricky situation: any plan you devise will be dashed to pieces by life’s harsh twists and turns. He shows it in the poor daughter’s brilliance, her assumed air of superiority, that she uses to let the rich family know that they need her more than she will ever need them; she fits into the comforts of high living like a hand in a velvet glove. And he shows it in the rich family’s unquestioning confidence in their success and wealth, their privileged ignorance of any misery or hardship that may exist in some corner of the universe, and their profound shock and horror when something doesn’t work out according to plan.

Many elements in the movie brought to mind another 2019 movie of class-based politics, where an underclass creeps its way into the upper class’s comfortable existence, and where a prosperous family of four find themselves targeted by their warped, deprived mirror images. That movie, of course, is Jordan Peele’s Us, a horror and a thriller, with none of Parasite’s comedy, and a whole lot more of its unsettling terrors. The trouble is that Bong’s movie suffers from the comparison, as most movies must when held up against the blazing artistry of the maker of Get Out.

Bong and Peele both depict their upper-class characters ironically, with a scathing view of their obliviousness and blind privilege. They enjoy their luxuries carelessly, as if it cost nothing to attain them, and when they come across someone from life’s lower rungs, they look at them with open contempt and condescension. Parasite’s rich father and mother both literally hold their noses when talking with the chauffeur, and believe strongly in a servant’s ethical duty never to think of himself as the natural equal of his employer. The father calls this “crossing the line”. (Bong takes a few extra pot shots, such as with the rich mother’s easy gullibility, or the absurd belief in her 6-year-old’s artistic genius in his crayon drawings.) And Bong, like Peele, takes the well-advised step of showing the perspective of his underclass; his characters live out human desires with tender or fierce emotions, rather than act as pawns in a chess game of political fantasies.

But, where Peele first devises a story in his script along the lines of his political framework, and then conjures it into furious, concentrated philosophy — a bright, living work of art — Bong devises his story in the script, and then merely repeats that step in front of the camera. The pleasures of his movie are all on the page, and are only amplified by the acting and filming of them. It’s not surprising that Parasite connects as immediately with European, American, and South African audiences as with Korean ones, when the performances very straightforwardly and dependably act out the characters’ neatly delineated thoughts and feelings, and nothing more. In the movies of Jordan Peele, each minute gesture, each vocal inflection, each moment of an actor’s movement and speech adds a harrowing psychological resonance. In Parasite, it adds a line to a character study.

None of this is to discourage readers from seeing Parasite. As I said, it’s thoroughly entertaining and I enjoyed each of its 132 minutes. Bong is an inventive writer and storyteller, with a caustic streak of humour. The surprises held in the plot are worth the price of a ticket, and well-placed for discussion afterwards. I’ve never seen any of his other movies, but Parasite alone makes it abundantly clear that Bong is a skillful director, one with a distinct vision and the means to realise it elegantly — his meanings are always immediately transparent and articulable. And that’s why Jordan Peele is the greater director.