Parasite Artfully Demonstrates the Violence of Wealth Disparity

The first time some of the other students and I walked around the market here, we were all immediately drawn to the giant Parasite poster like moths to a flame. Between the insidious title, the sleek mansion and lush green yard in the background, and especially the ominous black and white bars blotting out the eyes of these four somber characters, we all anticipated a dark and luxuriant horror. While this film definitely had these moments, Parasite’s layered and nuanced critique of late stage capitalism cannot be restricted to just this one genre.

Parasite tells the story of an all unemployed family living in a sub-basement in modern day South Korea. The family will do just about any odd job to get by until the main character, Ki-woo, gets offered a job as a tutor for the wealthy and glamorous Parks family. Eventually the entire family finds ways to become employed by the Parks until their sole livelihood becomes dependent upon them. Thus, what starts off as a seemingly light-hearted comedy about some pretty clever scamming techniques, soon grows to become something much darker as Ki-woo’s family becomes more and more entangled in the Parks’ lives and the glaring divisions between the rich and the poor rear their ugly head.

While this film’s distinct tonal shifts may seem like it would muddy the story or jar the audience, this genre exploration instead felt completely natural and served the narrative so well, being an established style of the director and writer, Joon-ho Bong. The very humorous first half of this film works as a way to unsuspectingly ease the audience into this story, while still having a definite undercurrent of social criticism and tragedy. One of the very first scenes demonstrates this delicate balance perfectly: the family folds pizza boxes together to try to make some quick cash, when a fumigator starts spraying fumes down their street. They argue about whether to close the window or not as the fumigator approaches and the dad insists to keep it open so they can get some fumigation for free. What could be brushed off as a small joke about how cheap the patriarch of the family, Ki-taek, is, instead becomes an incredibly moving moment. The camera stays on Ki-taek as the poison billows inside their home and while the rest of his family begins hacking and cursing around him, Ki-taek doesn’t show any reaction and keeps folding boxes. This stoicism along with the dehumanization of this act expertly revealed such clear hallmarks of the impoverished human experience, and this was just in the first fifteen minutes! Parasite is full of these powerfully dynamic moments, but as the film goes on, the dimensions of humor dial back as horror and more overt social commentary take over.

As Parasite begins to unfold, Joon-ho Bong doesn’t shy away from going at the very heart of the class dynamics at play—quite literally. That moment when Ki-taek snaps and stabs Mr. Park in the chest felt like the very crux of this story. These characters transcend and become archetypal: where the heads of each household representing the rich and the poor finally clash. However, in this moment, instead of offering relief or triumph, Bong gives us the true futility of this act: Ki-taek must instead retreat to the bunker, a metaphor for the literal prison the impoverished inhabit in our society, one in which violence cannot liberate us. Bong delivers this message earlier in the film as well. In the bunker, when Ki-taek’s family discovers the former housekeeper’s husband and they in turn discover Ki-taek’s family’s infestation, the bloodshed that ensues perfectly demonstrates how lack of money causes the lower classes to turn on one another. We are forced to wrestle for the little amount of space we are allowed to take up in this world or in this case: in the Parks’ household, and in the end we only hurt one another.

However, humor goes hand and hand with tragedy, so even in these much bleaker moments Joon-ho Bong still gives us the same expert blend as before, except comedy is no longer in the driver’s seat. Moments like when the sister sits on the toilet spewing black-brown sewage over the ruins of her flooded home and just lights a cigarette, the old housekeeper’s husband’s bizarre worship of Mr. Park/the whole concept of the Morse Code lamp system, the dog gnawing at the sausages on the decorative sword plunged in the old housekeeper’s husband’s stomach, expertly replicate the horrific absurdism of our waking life where sometimes all you can do is laugh.

All and all, Parasite was probably one of the most engaging films I have seen at the festival thus far. The poster and that intriguing title did not disappoint and in fact have been elevated for me now. On the surface this work’s name seems to function as a simple representation of the plot: about how Ki-taek’s family literally infested and leeched off the Parks’ wealth much like a parasite. However I believe that this title is really a subversion of this idea of the poor being a vermin to society. The true parasites are the individuals who exploit our rigged economic system and hoard all of the world’s wealth for themselves.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Official Competition), May 24, 2019. Running time: 132 MIN.

PRODUCTION: CJ Entertainment, Barunson E&A

Producers: Kwak Sin Ae, Moon Yang Kwon

CREW: Director: Bong Joon Ho Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won Cinematography: Hong Kyung Pyo Editor: Yang Jinmo Production design: Lee Ha Jun Music: Jung Jae Il

WITH: Song Kang Ho, Lee Sun Kyun, Cho Yeo Jeong, Choi Woo Shik, Park So Dam