Name: Parasite
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Genre: Comedy, Thriller, Drama
Released: 2019
Duration: 133 min
Rating: 8.5

Parasite (2019) · Cinespective

Meaning, unpacked

Central idea

The film can be read as an examination of how class division is built into space and perception, and of how people with little power end up competing with each other instead of with the system above them.

What it means, and why it matteredParasite is about class division built into space and perception. A poor family talks its way into the service of a rich one, and it ends in violence at a garden party. But the film is really about how inequality feels. Wealth is high, bright and open. Poverty is low, cramped and below street level. Bong Joon Ho turns inequality into geography, so you feel it in your legs every time someone climbs or descends.

What it means

Parasite is about class division built into space and perception. A poor family talks its way into the service of a rich one, and it ends in violence at a garden party. But the film is really about how inequality feels. Wealth is high, bright and open. Poverty is low, cramped and below street level. Bong Joon Ho turns inequality into geography, so you feel it in your legs every time someone climbs or descends.

The film is also about how people with little power end up fighting each other instead of the system above them. The Parks are never obviously cruel. They are courteous and tasteful, yet their politeness still marks who counts. The Kims get in by performing the roles employers expect, which raises an uncomfortable question: how much of social standing is just a convincing presentation? Then there is smell, a line no disguise can erase. A passing reaction to it carries the film's central insult.

Why it mattered

In 2019 Parasite showed that a subtitled genre film could reach the widest audience. It premiered at Cannes and won the Palme d'Or, the first for a Korean film. At the Academy Awards it won four Oscars, including Best Picture, the first for a film not in English. Bong's remark about overcoming "the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles" was widely repeated.

It also showed how much a film can say through design. The Park house and the flooded neighbourhood were built sets, so Bong could control sightlines, glass, stairs and the flood itself. Hong Kyung-pyo's widescreen frames layer doors, windows and levels to show who watches and who is watched. The screenplay plants objects and lines early and pays them off with changed meaning, while the genre keeps shifting from comedy into something darker.

After watching