What made Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite so great?
Oscar Nominations for best picture 2020.
This is a record at 92nd Oscars Academy awards to declare a foreign movie with “Best Picutre” of the year 2020. Also, bagged other awards of best director, best editing, best original screenplay amongst other. So far in the history of Oscars 10 foreign films have been nominated under this category including my favourite “Life is Beautiful”.
I believe most of you have already watched this movie as this write up will rip the story apart and throw tons of spoilers your way. If you haven’t watched the movie, stop reading it now and come back later.
What….? go watch and come back here
This is a movie about haves and havenots and life of 3 families.
Kim’s family Parks’s Family Moon-gwang Couple
Parks’s family who is living in a architecturally designed house on the elevated grounds with sprawling space and huge windows with abundant sun light infusing into their lives.
Kim’s family living in basement half way undergound struggling to get connected to free wifi with small windows at the ground level with limited view of external work and sunlight.
Moon-gwang’s husband living under the basement with out natural light and limited food while his wife serving Park’s fmily upstairs.
That’s the setup.
Though the movie starts with comedy zonre it evolves into many other before we walk out of theatre.
If you observe the scenes involving rich Park’s family are visually represented with stairs, high elevated grounds and huge spaces. Whereas as Kim’s family is represented with conjusted lanes and low ground shots…depicting have’s live above while havenot’s live underneath.
So let’s walk into the key aspects of why this movie is great though it looks like any other common thriller movie.
1. Montage : Montage is what manipulates time and helps to skip time to convey the message in less shots. Read somewhere that Alfred Hitchcok is known to be the master of montage in his movies. The moments from hatching the plan to execution of it is such a beauty in shortest span of time with brilliant camers shots.
2. Loop : Ketchup on the pizza while hatching a plan to spraying same ketchup on a napkin in dustbin indicating the successful execution of plan of replacing servants.
3. Referencing : Most of the scens are reference well back and forth. Few instances which highligh this phenomena.
a. In the beginning of the film when Kim’s family sit together for drinks the window view of outside is that of a person peeing outside. Later in the movie after they successfully hatch their plan and remove all existing servants they enjoy drinks together at the Park’s house. This time the window view shows the sprawling lawn with showers. Kind of false sense of achievement.
b. Immediately after few minutes the same rain havoc their lives and house resulting them to run for shelter and used clothes. Next day Park’s family feel thankful for the rain pour which resulted in less dust in the city…Perspective!
c. Immediately after park’s family comes back from the camping abrupty the Kim’s family had to hide below the centre table while the rich couple sleeping on the couch looking at their kid’s USA made tent, through the window. Visual representation of where does Kim’s family belong to…underneath.
d. The way Kim’s family comes back to their own house that rainy night is all about downfall and getting dirty from there…represented beautifully by huge set of downward stairs and slope and water flow everywhere.
e. Also the over flown toilet that night to the next day’s bloodbath are true referencing points of what’s coming our way.
f. All the characters so well weaved into the story that each one of them have their own arc including
i. The house - Representing the status
ii. Rain - Depicting the prespectives
iii. Flickering light - Leaves a great hope at the end
iv. Stair cases - Raise n Fall of Kim’s family
v. The body odor - Not so important untill the end twist
vi. Stone - Gift from a friend but not a gift
4. Enough Hints :
a. Old housekeeper cuts off camera wires to get into the house in the middle of the movie at that moment she unconsciously helped Kim to get away after the party at the end.
b. While drunk on the couch Kim (daughter) scoffs that Kim (dad) needs to focus on her & not the Park’s family. This scene foreshadows the killing at the end when Kim (dad) has two options: focus on his dying daughter or the demand of his rich employer to get the son to the hospital.
c. WIFI connectivity issues at the beginning to the last scene where the connectivity loss between dad and son….
d. Daughter is stabbed the same way as the rich house owner
Parasite that is embedded within a host will kill the host eventually…
…. & That’s PARASITE movie for you.
![Slide 1 of 6: After playing back-to-back serious characters, Samantha Akkineni is going to light up the screen with her next release, Oh! Baby. The film will see the actor portray a jovial character.]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AACPNqL.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=450&y=179"} "After playing back-to-back serious characters, Samantha Akkineni is going to light up the screen wit... - Provided by Indian Express Slideshows")
