Review - Parasite

Parasite won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, which roughly translates to "It won the best award at what is maybe the most important/pretentious film festival in the world". Essentially, huge news for film nerds like me, variably big news if you don't waste your life following film news and media but the point I'm making is that it has been riding a wave of unstoppable hype since then, more so than usual for a film from beloved Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer, The Host and Okja, among many other gems). I've become a huge fan of the dude over the last year or so and his films range from post-apocalyptic train takeovers to true crime recreations and gonzo B-movie monster flicks, meaning that there is something for absolutely everyone in his remarkably consistent filmography. I don't want to show my cards too early but let's just say that Parasite is more of the same, in that it's nothing like anything that has come before.

I don't want to show my cards too early but let's just say that Parasite is [...] nothing like anything that has come before

Unlike the last couple of films I've talked about here, Parasite is plot dense but again, I'm not going to talk much about it because this is a film you should know very little about before seeing it (and you really should see it). About as much as you should know is that it's about two families, one rich, one poor. The poor family are really struggling and so start to try and ingratiate themselves into the rich family. That's it, that's all you're getting. Like all Bong films, the story is a wild damn ride that goes all over the place in ways that should not work but just do, with a handful of moments whose ambiguities I am still puzzling over. At one moment in the third act, I sat and thought to myself "Wait, how the hell did we get here?", which should not be taken as a sign of poor plotting but just how unpredictable the journey was. Even better, there were a handful of moments where plot revelations started making me lean forward into the edge of my seat, a feeling that I am pretty much always chasing in cinema. Story good, basically.

I'm nervous about talking about the performances because I know exactly one actor in this film, all the rest are (to me) complete unknowns, but I suppose it is worth prefacing this very quickly by saying that everyone does a completely perfect job in their roles. The one dude I recognise of the cast is a chap by the name of Song Kang-Ho, who has a knack of appearing in some of the most internationally successful South Korean films out there, having had major roles in some of the Park Chan-Wook and Lee Chang-Dong films I'm yet to check out but most important for this review, he's also a major collaborator with Bong Joon-Ho. The guy starred in Memories of Murder, Snowpiercer and The Host, this is an actor with a hell of a winning streak and he continues it here, picking up a couple of traits from some of the aforementioned movies and playing with them to devious effect. To explain more would spoil it but he is fab as ever. I'd also like to give quick mentions to Yeo-Jeong Jo for her brilliant work as an unassuming and naive housewife, as well as So-Dam Park for delivering my favourite five seconds in cinema from the last five years or so. As I said at the start of the paragraph though, it's a cast I was almost entirely unfamiliar with, all delivering outstanding work.

Parasite is one such film, where seeing the joints on all the moving parts only sends me helplessly head over heels.

Talking about the technical aspects of Parasite is difficult because I sort of forgot to notice them? That sounds bad, I know, but I think it is only testament to the inherent "filmness" of this film. "What the hell does that mean?" I hear you mumble under your breath. Well, dear reader, it's hard to explain but I'll do my best. The way I view cinema is not as reality, not even as a representation of reality, but as an artistic product that has been explicitly constructed. Sometimes it can link back to reality, but a reliance on that can really bug me (hence my reverence of Rocketman over the blandness of Bohemian Rhapsody). So when a film really leans into how constructed it is, either structurally like in Mulholland Drive, thematically like in Synecdoche, New York, or in sheer gonzo visuals like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I fall in love with it. Parasite is one such film, where seeing the joints on all the moving parts only sends me helplessly head over heels. Yes, that sequence is clearly a Hitchcock reference, but that's what makes it great. Yes, this sequence would never happen in real life, but that's why it's so cool. No, the set design isn't always realistic or practical but was the office set in The Apartment practical? No, it just made for an amazing looking film. This is my (relatively) simple way of saying that everything in Parasite is very well made, allowing for just enough artifice for me to dig the hell out of it.

I hope I've sold you on this film, it is absolutely brilliant and worth seeing by anyone who enjoys watching films. Foreign films often have a hard time reaching mass audiences (hence why it isn't reaching the UK until February) but they're frequently massively rewarding in their uniqueness (hence my desire to recommend them so often), of which Parasite is no exception. I'm really looking forward to seeing it again and as it stands, I'm delighted to give it a