Hi, sorry, I just wanted to say I didn't understand your Parasite tags? Did you like the movie? I only saw it last month and I don't know if I liked it or not, what's your opinion? Thanks!
I liked the movie a lot and will probably rewatch it soon, but I don’t know if I understood what it had to say about capitalism and class.
Like - when I was a teen we watched A Short Film About Killing by Kieślowski. It shows a man planning a murder, and, later, the state planning his execution. It’s supposed to be against the death penalty because it compares how the two killings are essentially the same, but the murder itself is shown so crudely, it actually had the opposite effect on me and made me wonder for the first time in my life if it’s actually okay to execute some people, you know what I mean? The guy was just evil, no rational motive, no redeeming qualities - I walked away thinking, ‘Whatever, they were right to kill him’.
And here it’s sort of the same. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of symbolism and metaphors and stuff because I don’t know Korean culture and cinematography very well, but for me, the obvious message didn’t stick. Like, sure - it’s profoundly unjust the Kim family is living in some basement while the Parks have a mansion to themselves, but by choosing to frame the families in the way he did, I feel like Bong Joon-ho didn’t help us focus on that inequality. Because the thing is, the Kims are terrible people. Ki-woo takes advantage of a teenage girl, Ki-jung poses as a therapist so she can fake-treat a sick child for money? They manage to get two people fired for no good reason except ‘I want that for myself’. The young driver could suffer from life-long consequences if Mr Park tells anyone about what (allegedly) happened, and as for Moon-gwang - first of all, the peaches stunt could have killed her? And even if her husband hadn’t been living in the basement, what is a person her age going to do? Mrs Park won’t recommend someone she thinks has an infectious disease, and Moon-gwang’s worked her entire life in that house. She was happy there. As for the Park family - yes, the way they live is symptomatic of a sick society, but they’re not bad people. Mrs Park is a bit of an idiot and does her best to look after her kids. Mr Park may be a snob, but he was never openly rude to his employees and paid them well. In the end, the Kims’ scam resulted in the death of four people, and I think some forgot that the title of the movie was meant to refer to both families - the Parks are parasites because they need others to survive, but the Kims are also parasites, because they cuckoo their way into someone else’s home and wreck it.
I don’t know. I think it was a masterpiece and well worth a watch, but I’m not sure about its political message, if any.
