This is Why Parasite Won Best Picture

Jessica we don't let's face it 2019 was parasites here hands down it started off strong with its palm dorwan at the Conn Film Festival and the Haight port only grew as the year progressed it became a phenomenon breaking foreign box-office records and securing itself as the best rated film on letterboxed but would its hype translate into a Best Picture win many thought not the rational thinking was that the Academy would award Best Picture to either Jojo rabbit or 1917 Jojo rabbit because it won the audience award at TIFF which historically significantly raises the chances of a Best Picture win in 1917 because well it's a movie made for the Academy but past performance is no guarantee of future results parasites hype was strong enough to best the to frontrunner and well since weed is legal in California now everyone in the Academy wanted to take a hit from the bong hit after hit after hit it was an historic night with parasite being the first South Korean film to win an Oscar and the first film to win both the best foreign film and the Best Picture Oscars and the hype has not died down since even if bong is on a break both mainstream moviegoers and cinephiles loved the film but why how does this film appeal to just about everyone and was even enjoyed by audiences who normally would not watch subtitled films spoiler warning for anyone that cares also I don't speak Korean so my pronunciations may not be great before we dive into parasite let's go back to Alfred Hitchcock Hitchcock had a distinction about the difference between surprise and suspense surprise is when no one knows a bomb is under the table and it blows up all of a sudden suspense is when the audience knows the bomb is under the table but the people in the stage or in the film don't the audience's knowledge of the impending doom invest them into the story as a long for the characters to realize that the bomb is there and ready to blow bong shows the audience the bomb in parasite it's not a real bomb but a metaphorical one instead of wires and TNT it's crafted out of lies deceit and greed and not just that we see the character setting up the bomb we know it's going to explode even if the characters think that they can escape unscathed everything pays off it's a film with almost no fat but what keeps the film interesting is that not everything pays off how we think they will let's take for example the landscape stone men gives it to the family telling them that it brings great material wealth over the next act we see the whole family secure high-paying jobs at the parks house it looks like it paid off but no it still holds a few surprises for us the rock re-enters the film when ki-woo finds it floating in the semi basement at this moment bong transforms a symbol of creation to a symbol of destruction s ki-woo attempts to murder gunsa with this rock and at the last moment gunsa reverses the destructive power of the rock on Tokiwa cementing the rock is an agent of self-destruction no doubt a side effect of material wealth another interesting object the bong transforms in the film is key Jung's underwear initially it's used as a trap to falsely paint the driver as a pervert but the destructive nature of the panties persists as it helps turn key Tuck against dongok as he talked overhears don't eat both sexualizing the panties in calling them cheap it's a double offense Tookie talked as if both dishonours his daughter and his family those are just a few wires in the bomb that spectacularly explodes though with each lie that Kim's conjure the more powder they throw into the keg in the more the fuse shrinks we watch the film fully aware of the potential consequences glued to the screen to see how it will all go down and for how surprising the film is everything is foreshadowed seriously watch it a second time and see just how bong signals just about everything that happens don't eat Park notes that the maid eats enough for two people the pesticide gas causes all the Kim's clothes to smell the same their tendency to keep their windows open in the beginning of the film comes back at the end when the rain waters flood into the semi basement there's also da song's traumatic ghost encounter in the first grade which we later learned is actually gun so living in the underground bunker and the bunker we learned that almost no one knows of its existence which comes into play at the end as key talk uses it as a shelter after the events of the garden party even the drunk guy peeing in front of their semi basement foreshadows the flood of rain and sewage and who could forget the peaches The Maids allergy the peaches not only aids in getting her fired but also in effectively killing her which then causes gunsa to snap and ignite the bomb everything is set up and played out in such a way so that the film is unrelenting the tension only builds and this prizes are only surprises we really should have seen coming the overall structure of the film is masterful but what puts it above the rest why did it win Best Picture no other well paced thriller in recent memory has quite captured the zeitgeist like parasite to quote the movie it's so metaphorical so let's dive deeper let's go below the surface and into the semi basement and the bunker one of the starkest motifs in the film is a use of elevation above ground and underground the Kim's lived not just in a semi basement but a semi basement at the bottom of a long flight of stairs to contrast that the parks live at a high elevation and the characters have to ascend a flight of stairs to get to their house the Kim's are literally lower class and the parks are quite literally upper-class but of course a microcosm of this elevation in class disparity also exists entirely within the house the park sleep on the second floor and gunsa in later key talk live in the fallout shelter beneath the house but here's something to note the fallout shelter is still at a higher elevation than the Kim's in my basement even though the person who lives in the bunker must live a parasitic existence on the house owners it's better than living in the semi basement that's why gunsa developed such an obsession with mr. Park he knows that the parks are the reason for his comfort sure he might live in a glorified prison cell but at least he can eat well and he's in the presence of the elite and let's go back to talking about the landscape rock the object that starts at all and in a sense ends it as well remember how it comes back into the story during the flooding of the semi basement well how does it come back it floats this rock a bringer of material wealth is hollow as is the pursuit of wealth according to bone the Kim's have tried time and time again to obtain financial security they ran some shops it closed we see them making pizza boxes at the beginning but their pay is dock to do a quarter of the boxes being folded incorrectly which of the four family members messed up the folding we can only assume but my money is on the dad but the strategy that works best for them is their scam it's obvious that this is not the first time they pulled off something like this their scam is a well-oiled machine it's also kind of a fourth-wall breaking scam as they direct each other and how to say their lines but I digress we have to consider that at the beginning they're close to destitute desperately trying to find an internet connection off which to leech so if they've put their signature scam into play but or it's only let them back to poverty and we know that the scam will eventually fail there are too many lies cover-ups and witnesses to the truth so the material wealth that men brought to them was Hollow I don't want to get political but you could expand this metaphor to society at large that poor people will stay poor and the rich will stay rich any deviations from this could be seen as flukes that will adjust themselves out in time all ki-woo can do at the end it's fantasize about making enough money to buy the house to free his dad but the reality is that this will never be so and if there was a popular theme that stuck with audiences this last year it was to class divided normal people are pushed to the fringes as wages stagnate well the cost of living Rises while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer the disdain between the two classes grows this division is one of the reasons that Joker and parasite resonated but how do we see this disdain in the film we see it immediately when the city has exterminator spray pesticide throughout the poor neighborhood it's meant to kill the bugs but bond shows us the family choking on the noxious gas it begins the comparison between kataka and cockroaches a term even his wife calls him in the end he's forced to live in the shadow only coming out to steal food at night much like a roach but did he start his one or was he reduced to being one adding to that the micromanagement by mr. Park reveals that he doesn't trust or respect any of the Kim's or any of his previous servants he and his wife easily assumed the worst about their previous servants and fire them without blinking an eye on top of their demands mr. Park requires that they never cross the line in any way shape or form the Kim's faking of their personas and credentials is their way of rebelling against the rich and showing their own disdain for them but the two groups can only be in contact with each other for so long before the passive aggressiveness escalates to aggressiveness it's interesting to note that the trait that both families share is their propensity to lie and manipulate the Kim's lie about their identities and paths of course but the parks lie to their servants about why they fire them the song completely makes up his artistic revelations to make his parents think he's some sort of eccentric genius ki-jung or jessica fabricates the idea that da song could be showing signs of schizophrenia and his paintings as a manipulation to charge higher rates and secure her position moon Gwang keeps her husband in the bunker and secretly feeds him with the parks food kiru starts a relationship with da hi first to save his job as tutor but it keeps it going under the hopes of marrying rich even reading her diary to see what he can do to win her over even more and speaking of hiring actors to play as his parents should the marriage happen rich or poor servant or master no one is blameless no one is perfect looking through the class divisions every character is just a human being fighting for their own survival in their own way that's why it won Best Picture it's not only a tightly written and satisfying thriller it's a film with a timely message that effectively interweaves its message and themes into the story without treating the audience like they're stupid there's more to unpack with this film and I'm sure I've missed more than a few things so of course I encourage discussion in the comments and if you like parasite I highly recommend the film burning which released in 2018 - not as much fanfare but it tackles similar themes of class in a superb way this might be heresy but I actually kind of prefer it both are great though anyway if you liked this video please like comment and subscribe and please consider checking out some of the other videos on this channel I will see you all in the next video

Channel: The Kino Corner

Views: 195,043

Keywords: Parasite, Oscar, Academy Awards, Bong Joon Ho, Best Picture, 1917, Jojo Rabbit, Korean film, 2020, Film, Video Essay, Analysis, Cinema, The Kino Corner, Neon, Cannes Film Festival, Palme D'Or, Foreign Film, Art Film, Movies, Film Criticism, Film Analysis

Id: xMCjVf806nE

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 15 2020