The Kims are poor in money but rich in spunk. Father, mother, son and daughter inhabit a crummy basement in the slums; the rooms crawl with bugs and they have to stand above the toilet holding their cellphones to a ceiling corner for wi-fi. They make a living folding cardboard delivery boxes for a pizzeria. One day, the son, Ki-woo, is visited by his affluent friend who recommends him as tutor to the high school daughter of the Park family. The Parks are 1%ers who dwell in a walled compound designed by a famous architect. Ki-woo has to photoshop a fake college diploma for the job interview. He has been to college but couldn’t afford four years. However, he’s bright and can talk the talk—especially to rich people whose awareness is confined to superficialities.
The Kims and the Parks are at the heart of Parasite, the South Korean film nominated for Best International Feature Film (i.e. foreign language) and—this is remarkable, Best Motion Picture (in any language) and Best Director for filmmaker Bong Joon-ho. Parasite isn’t just competing in the overseas art house but is also contending with The Irishman, 1917 and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. No foreign language film has ever won for Best Picture but if this year marks the first time, Parasite is deserving. It’s a great film.
For the first half, Parasite is a screwball comedy as the resourceful Kims gain entry into the household of the clueless Parks. Creating a false identity for herself, Ki-woo’s sister Ki-jeong becomes an art therapist to the Parks’ toddler, a boy whose crayon doodles are described as Basquiat-like. “I googled art therapy and ad-libbed the rest,” she tells her family. The siblings contrive to get the Parks’ chauffeur fired and replace him—false identity again—with their dad. He’s a fast study who learns to drive the Parks’ touch-screen driven Mercedes Benz by visiting a Mercedes dealer and pretending to be a customer. Then they get rid of the housekeeper and replace her with mom. Suddenly, the Kims are fully employed.
As for the family they work for, Mrs. Park is neurotic and hapless, dependent and determined to maintain an antiseptic cocoon around the compound. Mr. Park is mild-mannered and detached; he likes his servants because they know enough not to “cross the line.” Amiability is one thing but empathy is another. The lower class even smells different, he tells his wife.
And then the comedy turns dark, even tragic, as the Kims find themselves wrestling for position with a family less fortunate still. There is no solidarity among society’s lower half, bedeviled by debt, culturally stigmatized and—outside networks of influence—doomed at dead end. With Parasite, Bong composed a visual symphony as well as a tale of two classes almost as meaningful in the U.S. as it is in South Korea.
