Who’s the Parasite?

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is purportedly a critique of late stage capitalism. We’re told even Bong agrees with this, but it’s not so clear he is and certainly not clear by watching his best film to date. It is the usual suspects that want to see Parasite as some kind of anti-capitalism film, but these are people who like to pretend that class conflict was non existent before the rise of capitalism. As Jesus tells his apostles in Mathew 26:11; “the poor you will always have.”

Parasite is no doubt a critique of class conflict, but there are no such pretensions of Marxist ideology permeating his film. Far more nuanced than the simplistic “rich people are bad and there is nobility in poverty” trope, Boon and co-writer Han Jin-wan dare to delve deeper into the conflict, allowing a naive innocence to their antagonists, and a not so innocent cynicism emanating for their protagonists. The protagonists of the film are the poverty stricken Kim’s and the antagonists the fabulously wealthy Park’s.

Bong mainstay Song Kang-ho (Memories of a Murder, The Host, and Snowpiercer) is the patriarch of the Kim family, but the films stars are no doubt Choi Woo-shik (Train to Busan) and Park So-dam (The Silenced,) with Jang Hye-jin playing the mother. Choi is Kim Ki-woo who is recommended to the Park family to take over tutoring young Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so) in English. Once hired, he seizes upon an opportunity to get his sister Kim Ki-jeong (Park), hired. Although that relation kept secret, she’s hired to tutor Da-hye’s younger brother Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun).

Cho Yeo-jeong plays Da-hye and Da-song’s pretty but harried mother. When Ki-jeong interviews for the job of tutoring the young Park boy in art, she intuitively picks up on Mrs. Park’s naivete and having done a bit of research in art and psychology for the job, she plays her prospective employer like a finely tuned fiddle. Not only does she secure the job but she is able to demand a high salary to do that job. Mrs Park insists upon their driver taking Ki-jeong home and on that drive home, the driver seemingly sweet on Ki-jeong, she seizes an opportunity to frame the driver.

Unbeknownst to that driver, she has taken her panties off and slid them underneath the passenger side of the front seat. Soon, the patriarch of the Park’s is driving home and notices those panties. He is naturally upset about it but waits until he gets home to discuss it with his wife. The next time Ki-jeong is at the Park manor, Mrs. Park absentmindedly tells her about having to let go of their driver and she tells the matriarch about a driver she knows. That driver is, of course, her father, Ki-taek.

With now three of the Kim family working for the Park family, they only have to figure out how to get rid of the beloved maid working for the Park’s. This dark comedy is delicious in it’s portrayal of a conniving family, otherwise decent people, struggling to rise above their status. The Kim family discovers the Park’s maid, Gook Moon-gwan (Lee Jung-eun) is allergic to peaches and uses this weakness towards her undoing. Up to this point Parasite has been casually veering into the left turn thriller.

Much like Mr. Kim might as a professional driver ease into a turn, so too does Bong steer the film into a thriller. It remains on the same black comedy highway, but circumstances go from getting better for the Kim’s to getting much, much worse. Once Mrs. Kim is hired as the maid, the Park family takes a camping trip leaving her in the manor all alone. Of course, the rest of the Kim’s join her to celebrate their new good fortunes.

Bong’s use of stairwell’s in his film is nothing short of stunning. Often they are used to to show one or more of the Park’s on the stairs or at top looking down on one or more of the Kim’s below them. When the Kim’s are atop stairs they are public stairs of which they descend and keep descending down, down, down into the dark depths of their own despair. When Mrs. Park fires her housekeeper Moon-gwang, it is out in the backyard as they sit across from each other at the picnic table. However, we witness this scene silently and from above through the picture window where Da-song watches them below.

Even when the Park’s are lying together on the couch, they lie above the Kim family that desperately hides under the coffee table in an effort to hide. When the Park’s finally fall asleep each of the Kim’s creep out from the table across the floor on their belly’s, while the Park’s sleep soundly in their silk pajamas. All throughout, Bong makes sure that every character is right where they should be. Either above or below.

The Park manor is just a much a character in this story as the Park’s and Kim’s. It made known the mansion was designed specifically for the Park’s by an architect. From the impressive production design of Lee Ha-jun, to the film’s cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, the consideration of sunlight and when and where it shone was decided upon before the house was even designed. Kyung-pyo’s stark contrast between the sunlit and brights starlight moments of the Park manor and the dark and drab lighting of the Kim’s basement dwelling is seemingly flawless.

The use of windows are also as key in design as are the stairwell’s. Whether it be the picture windows of the Park’s mansion looking out into the plush greenery of the countryside, or the street level windows of the Kim’s basement dwelling revealing the slums that surround them. Often times the Kim’s are forced to watch some drunk urinate on the sidewalk in plain view. The contrast between wealth and squalor is intentionally striking.

That this should necessarily be a critique of capitalism is simply naive. The rich have long situated themselves atop the poor. The long history of civilizations strongly suggest that wealth inequality is as ancient as the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and probably older than that. This story is older than the hills the Park’s reside. That Bong sets the tale in a contemporary setting doesn’t change history.

If capitalism is guilty of anything it is increasing the number of wealthy people (many who’ve pulled themselves up from their bootstraps) that can escape the trap of squalor. This is precisely what the Kim’s are attempting to do by insinuating themselves into the employment of the Park’s. They eat better because of it, they’re able to pay past due bills and to relax a bit more. Had they simply seized opportunity as it presented itself this would have been a different story.

Instead, Ki-jeong engages in an act of deception to get the Park’s regular driver fired and dishonestly create an opportunity for her father. After this, the entire family schemes to have the maid, Moon-gwang fired. That last act of deceit will have an irreversible spiral that sets the thriller in play, but before this happens Mr. Kim is already feeling guilty for what was done to Yoon, the previous driver. The rest of the family dismisses his guilt.

They assure Mr. Kim that Yoon was young and a good driver and shouldn’t have any problems at all finding another job. When the film opens they were all struggling to find an open network for an internet connection because their own had been cut-off due to lack of payment. Now that they’re all doing much better it’s easy for them to disconnect themselves from the hopelessness of poverty. To assure themselves that all people have to do is pull themselves up from their bootstraps.

They’ve no sooner been able to rise a bit in their social and economic status to begin making plans for a better life. Ki-woo admits to his family that the teenage Park girl he tutors, Da-hye has a crush on him. The family begins dreaming and even planning of a day Ki-woo might marry Da-hye and their social status rise even higher. Once all their schemes begin spiraling out of control however, the idiomatic “when it rains it pours” washes away their dreams. A monsoon floods their basement dwelling and they’re left homeless.

While trying to sleep in a gymnasium set up as a shelter for the displaced from that monsoon, Mr. Kim laments; “Ki-woo, you know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all. No plan. You know why? If you make a plan, life never works out that way.” But the next day, Mrs. Park has contacted the Kim’s and asked them to help her plan her son’s birthday party. Mr. Kim as her driver must drive her around to various shops and stores, pushing shopping carts while she chatters on the phone with invitations. Assuring the invited they need not bring food or gifts, she takes credit for the cooking Mrs. Kim will no doubt do.

Mr. Kim’s further humiliation by Mrs. Park comes while in the car driving, her feet casually propped up against the headrest of the front passenger seat, she for the first time recognizes the foul odor her husband had mentioned regarding Kim. Earlier Mr. Park had described the smell akin to stale radishes or boiled rags. Mrs. Kim sniffs and then melodramatically holds her nose as she rolls down the window. The continued humiliation comes from Mr. Park although less intentionally.

Everyone, to one degree or another is parasitic, but just as the Kim’s plans have failed so spectacularly, so too do the plans of the Park’s as their young son’s birthday party becomes something else entirely. From the script, to the design, cinematography and editing, the acting and of course, Bong’s masterful directing, this is a truly great film. It is a great film amid great films released in 2019, but Parasite stands a head above them.