Another evening, another movie. Given how many evenings I survived without movies, the latest surge of interest has probably to do with a mixture between the long dark evenings and the inevitable long days at home due to Covid 19 restrictions. But watching movies is a smart and challenging way to spend your evenings so I better not complain at all.
Parasite is probably my first notable South-Korean movie I ever watched and one that I will remember for a long time. For once, I think Hollywood awards are really something, as the movie directed by Bong Joon Ho won the appreciation of the Oscar jury and it is not always a possible mission for the non-English movies.
The movie is a black-and-sarcastic tragicomedy, featuring a poor family living in a basement in the suburbs that wants to be rich. Who doesn´t, actually? But in this case, they are actually scamming a naive, friendly and rich people. They lie about their academic credentials - so important in a country with over 90% of people with a high-ed degree - about their connections - they never share that they are family. Otherwise, they do their job well and are well paid and everything can continue until they got enough money to live happily ever after.
Obviously, they will never be part of other class than the one they were born into and no matter how much they try, their smell betray them. This olfactive distinction between being privileged and being an outcast is so outstanding but, well, it says a lot about social and economic differences in this part of Asia.
But the movie is far from a Cinderella story and the surprising, cruel, bloody ending is hunting - especially if you decided to watch the movie around midnight, as in the case of this not so wise writer.
Besides the story, the actors are playing very well with the class differences built through a genuine play between antinomic notions: clean and dirty, nonchalant and worrisome, chaos and order. Notions that towards the end are mixed up as the story itself is becoming more and more confusing and tensed. The images do play an important role in the storytelling as well, with many interesting architectural details that complete the dialogues and the other technical features of the movie.
I´ve watched the movie on Prive Video with German subtitles.
No comments:
Post a Comment