Parasite

...God Laughs
or
"Are You Being Served?" 

Here's an amazing multi-hyphenate movie that says a lot about class-clash while also being a wicked satire and a bit of a thriller, and it comes from a quite brilliant filmmaker out of Korea, Bong Joo-Ho.

It is an intricate story of how one can succeed—if  given the right contacts and allowed to grow into a position once enough information is learned to take advantage of the cracks in society and exploit them—without really trying.

The Kim family—father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jeong (Park So-dam)—live in a sub-basement apartment in a Korean slum that can barely contain them. When we first see them, disaster has struck—the free wi-fi they've been sponging off has stopped and they do a quick reconnaissance to see if there is some place where they can pick up another signal; it turns out there's a hot-spot right above the toilet. The family has no income other than making pizza boxes for a delivery service. It is apparent that Ki-taek is not unaccomplished; there is a medal on the wall from the past, but it is something that he has not been able to parlay into employment. Things are so desperate that at one point a fumigator is spraying the street for pestilence and Ki-taek orders the windows open: "Free fumigation!"

The kids are tech-savvy, with some exploitable skills and they are sharp enough that they can do some basic negotiating to make their situation a little better with the delivery service. But, the family ekes out an existence by taking advantage of any free perks they can pick up. One advantage that young Ki-woo has is a friend who's a university student; on a visit he bestows on the family a prosperity rock, and for his friend an opportunity—he will be studying abroad and asks that Ki-woo might do him a favor. He has been tutoring the daughter of a rich family, the Park's, and asks if Ki-woo will continue the English language tutoring. He has feelings for the daughter and knows he can trust his friend with her, rather than somebody else. He sets up a meeting with the girl's mother, and Ki-woo's sister forges papers for him to make it appear that he's a university student, too. 

Ki-woo goes to the interview and is impressed with the expansive he-tech house where the Park's live. He has been clued in that Mr. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a little dim and he impresses her as well as the Park's live-in housekeeper Gook moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), who seems to have more control over the house-hold. Mrs. Park has certain ways of doing things, but is entirely lax about others; she is a bit clueless about her kids—the daughter Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), who instantly develops a crush on Ki-woo and the younger son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun) who has some developmental issues. Da-song has a vivid imagination, which is tolerated by the Park's; for instance, he's seen ghosts in the house, which have brought on seizures, and he's currently going through a phase where he is fascinated by American Indians, threatening all visitors with rubber-tipped arrows.

Mrs. Park doesn't know what to do with Da-song as he can be a disruptive influence and wishes there was something she could do to channel his energies. When she shows "Kevin" (she insists on calling Ki-woo "Kevin") one of her son's paintings, he sees an opening, expressing interest in the style and mentioning that he has an acquaintance who might be able to help the kid with his art and using it to channel some of his energy—an "art therapist." Mrs. Park is intrigued and wants to meet this person.

"That person" is his sister Ki-jeong, only—in the plan that brother and sister work out—she is "Jessica" from America, who is studying in Korea. A trip down to the local internet cafe and she has documents that will impress Mrs. Park, and so the Kim's soon have two new sources of income and they start to make a lot more money for the family. The Park's, including tech-exec Mr. Park, is impressed with how well "Kevin" and "Jessica" are working out and it makes the lives of the parents that much easier.

If only they left it there. But, the Kim kids, while in the Parks' home, see opportunities—there is the chauffeur for Mr. and Mrs. Park and then, there is the housekeeper. A little training, a few test-drives of the newer model vehicles in the show-rooms, new set of clothes, a little blackmail and a little taking advantage of weaknesses, and the Kim's are soon all a part of the Park's lives, almost inseparable, each Kim assigned to a Park and their needs. Life is good. All the Kim's are steadily employed and all of the Park's are none the wiser to the subterfuge employed to get there.

But, it can't be that easy, can it?

Of course, it can't. And that's where the plot outline stops (due to spoiler issues) and the appreciation of Parasite (or gisaengchung or 기생충  if you would prefer) begins. Because once things start to settle down—and settle in—things only get more complicated and Parasite begins to take on another (...er) layer...story(?) from what it first appears to be. Because the plot eventually takes advantage of the issues of displacement and parity—if the Kim's can do this, why can't someone else?—and it is then that Parasite becomes more a thriller than a social satire (even a comedy) and becomes its own thing taking pages out of All About Eve and the Hitchcock playbook, clever little film that it is.

One also wonders what side to root for. Oh, sure you may have an "ideology"—that quaint little construct that replaces thought—and one could have a pang of resentment towards the Kim's (if they're so clever, why don't they find work—and the answer to that is "they do") or the Park's (how did they get so rich if they're that complacent and clueless?), but really, the audience is left a little adrift in this, not unlike the rudderlessness one feels when Janet Leigh is offed in Psycho and we start to latch onto Anthony Perkins in our attention—although it's uncomfortable doing so. The fact is the Kim's are clever enough to gain our respect and the Parks evoke the sympathy one has for the victim—even if they are still the ones "in charge."

They are in charge. They are, after all, the ones holding the purse-strings. The Kim's could be "let go" at any time (if their various subterfuges are found out) and washed out back to their ghetto apartment—which Bong demonstrates in which the Kim's must make a narrow escape back to their residence in the middle of a monsoon, following the same route as the drainage-water—and if the audience wasn't sympathetic to the Kim's there would be no tension...and it is there in abundance. The Kim's put themselves into a precarious position and, anxiously, the audience watches, dreading that it will all unravel.

The clash of class is palpable—one might even call it something of a strategic war—but, one feels it less in the characters than in the production design. This is one of those movies where the architecture defines what we see and may be one of the best examples of it since Kurosawa's High and Low (or Bong's Mother, actually) and the domiciles of both the Parks and the Kims are wonderful extremes in the use of space (or lack of it) to drive home a point. And the extravagant Park house (which already has had articles written about it in Architectural Digest) has one little surprise to it that might be the cleverest piece of irony in the movie-year. Certainly, the film has layers, not only in terms of strata but in terms of (shall we say...) "plot."

Post-script: Well, now Parasite has made something of a bit of history winning the latest Best Picture "first" at the Oscars. One waits for the inevitable back-lash: Is it deserving? (yes) Is it just some tokenism for a foreign film (no, it's that good and obviously so for Academy voters to appreciate—and when has a "foreign" film ever won for Best Picture—other than something British, that is?)

No. This is just good film-making where the term "foreign language film" is a meaningless term, when the language involved is the visual one of film, which have shared so many influences around the globe that despite the text involved has become one universal language, imported and exported throughout the world.

It is that sort of inclusive communication where one can nod one's head and, despite the clutter at the cineplex, call movies art.

A schematic of the much-discussed Park house of Parasite