Finally, a Korean film has earned the palm branch of the Cannes Film Festival – for the first time in its history. This is the rare case when the movie was equally warmly received by the audience and critics. This is what real success looks like, without the wormhole.
What is the movie Parasite about?
Many believe that the meaning of the film “Parasite” is in its social orientation. But he doesn’t end there. In the center of the plot are two families: poor Kims and rich Packs. First, we get to know the Kims huddled in the basement. Near which local drunkards often recover. It is hard to believe that someone would live in this “underground”. But it has to!
A poor, but friendly and loving family gets out as best it can. Stealing free wifi, looking for odd jobs, vaguely hoping for the future. It does not have any plans for the future. They do not even think about how to get cockroaches out of their own rooms. A powerful pillar of disinfectant smoke will burst into their window at lunch, and completely free. At this moment we will for the first time remember the name “Parasite”, but the metaphor will not be humiliating, but comical.
The father of the family has long lost hope for a permanent income, the mother only recalls past achievements in throwing the shot – the medal hangs on the wall in an honorary frame. The brother and sister are talented and enterprising, but they cannot save money for their studies. But now fate is knocking on the door with a stone in his bosom. The comrade of the eldest son brings a “stone of wealth” as a gift (grandfather’s inheritance to throw away) and at the same time makes a brilliant offer to his friend – to replace him for a while in a rich family, to work as a tutor.
The guy forges documents with the help of an artistically gifted sister and rubs himself into the confidence of wealthy spouses – he teaches their daughter English. Then he pulls up his sister – to teach the youngest son of the rich to draw. And then a couple of young tutors arrange such an intrigue to drag the whole family into a luxurious house, which is just amazing.
The first part of the film unfolds as a tragicomedy or sitcom, but in the second part there is a sharp turn and we have a cruel movie in front of us – a real thriller, the victims of which are all participants without exception.
Some will be surprised by Bong Joon Ho’s directorial look at a poor family – roguish, but charming. We always feel that the camera is on their side, not on the side of the rich, respectable and clean Pucks. By the way, we started talking about cleanliness not by chance – Kima’s scammers were able to disguise everything except the smell of poverty, the indestructible smell of the basement in which they live. He will become the dramatic spring of the film.
The meaning of the film “Parasite”
The meaning of the film “Parasite” is that poor people are looking for freebies, do not want to work, although they have experience and skills that allow them to earn. The father is a good driver, the daughter is well versed in Photoshop, the son could be an excellent sales manager. But the bottom line is that the father, lying on a cot, teaches his son not to make plans for anything, calls to live one day and wait for everything to fall on your head and looking for a shorter staircase leading to the top.
Another question is the attitude of people to each other, the rich, who themselves were once beggars, forgot who they were, some smells only vaguely began to remind them of something. Accordingly, the entire film is trying to distance themselves from people below them in prosperity. On the other hand, a family of rogues, who are asked for help by the same as they are, refuse her, although they themselves are not far away from her, but they already consider this woman below them. The essence of people is revealed very well.
Explaining the film is not an easy task. Yes, its acute social meaning lies on the surface. The stratification between rich and poor in today’s world is becoming unbridgeable, even in rich countries like South Korea. Someone will decide that the parasites in the movies are a poor family. After all, they made their way into the palace of pleasant and beautiful people, like cockroaches into the basement. However, the warm, albeit honest look of the director does not allow thinking so narrowly.
Rich spouses do not cause the slightest sympathy for their inhumanity, which extends not only to servants, but even to those closest to them. In their egoism, in their physical love, there is much more “insect” than human.
The metaphor of social stratification in the cinema is given so clearly that sometimes it becomes scary: the Packs live on a high, beautiful hill, and the Kims live at the bottom of the city and society, in the very sewer, which is flooded with feces during a terrible nighttime shower.
Some are at the top of the animal food chain, others are at the very bottom of it. But doesn’t this very principle, the principle of social and property stratification, turn us into animals? Doesn’t he doom us to inhumanity, loss of soul and dignity? Moreover, at the top and bottom of the damned chain – equally.
There is one more important plot move in the cinema, which we do not talk about yet, so as not to be branded as “suppliers of spoilers”. The scary thing is that even people swarming downstairs, on the public bottom, are incapable of solidarity outside their own family.
The meaning of the ending of the movie Parasite
The meaning of the ending is especially vague. Some critics directly state that this is a dream of a young man, his fantasy. Director Bong Joon Ho has always liked to let the fantastical in. The last minutes of the film, in which the young man triumphantly returns to the accursed house, look implausible. Yes, it is so, because everything is decided by the last seconds in which he is still sitting in his basement, from which he, apparently, cannot get out.
We understand that the poor Kims still have no plan, only dreams and dreams. And the double ending is the director’s attempt not to be inhuman and not to poke us in the face with how cruel the truth of life is. We still have the right to dream, even if someone considers our existence parasitic …
Write in the comments your assumptions and theories about what and what is the meaning of the film “Parasite”. We look forward to waiting!