Parasites is nominated for the Oscars 2020 which will be held this Sunday, February 9 (early on the 10th for Spain) in a total of 5 categories. Best film, best director, best original screenplay, best editing and, of course, best foreign film.
Few categories seem to us.
Below is the review we published in Postposmo shortly after opening Parasites and in which we appealed to a calm that is no longer necessary. It is the movie of 2019. Period.
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It had been six years since a film had unanimously won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes festival (the last one was The life of Adèle. Parasites, by South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, is the best film of 2019 and the worthy winner of the Oscar for Best Picture. It is a fact that critics have raved about Parasites
Parasite Review
Parasites it is not the best film of 2019 simply because the year is not over yet. It is cerebrally impossible to leave a movie theater and sentence “this movie is a ten”, in the same way that it is not possible to wake up the next day, or the following week, and sentence “this is the best movie of the year”. The only thing you need now Parasites it is time to let calm settle in; that the waters resume horizontality and that the noise fades.
Then, and only then, will we be able to address a question that, please make no mistake, is more than pertinent and necessary: can Bong Joon-ho's new masterpiece be the best film of this year 2019? that we are already beginning to see the final credits appear?
The films of 10 play a different league than those of 1-9: in the pristine works, the certainty of such perfection shakes one belatedly. When the movie haunts you.
This one, of course, looks like one of those:
Parasite Review
The ability of a film to surprise and exceed the expectations of the public is one of the fundamental requirements for success. Any creation, whether artistic, cultural or for pure consumption, has as its priority objective the overcoming of the cliché. Without a fresh script, the atmosphere, the quality of the dialogues, the photography or the camera movements matter little.
Despite its falsely simple approach (rich versus poor), Parasites passes this litmus test thanks to a phenomenon that will continue from beginning to end in the film: the flexibility and adaptability not only of its plot, but of the very nature of a film whose genre is practically unclassifiable.
As the narrative progresses (quickly, to the point, and without tedium or unnecessary flourishes), the genre of Parasites It changes without the viewer giving any importance to the mutation. If it detects it. Right after the viewing, certain gags and humorous scenes from the first bars of the film are now presented with the strangeness and remoteness of what already belongs to better times. Despite the fact that they took place in an underground cellar with the smell of frying, urine and pesticide.
Promotional image of the filming of the film Parasites, by director Bong Joon Ho
At the halfway point of the film, when we have all accepted that Parasites is going to tell us a story of masks and entanglements, what we really have to assimilate is the component of crazy unpredictability of the story that we are told. Severe doses of creativity and imagination would be essential to be able to predict the physical and psychological devastation that is coming to the two main families.
Here the film becomes us thriller or even a horror movie, to then culminate in a modern realistic drama denouement whose moral is a frontal attack on the stuff that dreams and aspirations of human beings are made of in the context of a hyper-capitalist society.
Who are the parasites really?
Like in The Godfather, Twelve Angry Men y Schindler's List (the highest rated movies of all time on FilmAffinity), the central theme of Parasites is the management of good and evil, this time using as a framework of analysis the morality of the acts of two families from Seoul located at opposite poles of the social ladder.
Contrary to what it may seem in the first bars, Parasites It does not seek to introduce the good guys to the bad guys or exploit a duality of heroes and villains: let the viewer decide which family and/or member to empathize with, and which to criticize. The villain here is conceptual and unbeatable: as soon as they have the opportunity to climb their social ladder, the humble emulate the roles and behaviors that they suffered and condemned at first.
One of the points in favor of Bong Joon-ho as a screenwriter is his skill in making believable bizarre approaches (or directly impossible, as happens in Okja, his previous work, less laureate in critics). This is one of the fundamental pieces of the overwhelming success of Parasites: In addition to being full of surprises, these are believable and only add magnetism to the story. The South Korean director uses each of the conventions of each genre to approach them head-on just before taking a break. Example:
-What happens: the poor family's son gets a job after cheating on a rich family.
-The expectation: maybe this will help the kid out of poverty. It may also be the beginning of a love story. Announcement of a change of life in sight.
-What ends up happening: the son of the poor family takes the opportunity to repeat the deception and get work for his whole family.
Si Parasites were a standard Hollywood production, the climax of the film would be the inevitable discovery of the cake.
Nothing is what it seems in Parasite
Once the proposal of the film has been discovered (the premise of the family deception practiced by the Kims), it is tempting to think that the reason for the rest of the film will revolve around the possibility that the Parks find out about the scandal sooner or later. Si Parasites If it were a cheap Hollywood movie, the climax would be the inevitable discovery of the cake. As will be noted in its final bars, the issue of masked invasion/occupation is only the vehicle with which to highlight an infinitely larger problem regarding the existential aspirations of each individual.
With each turn of the script, the viewer renews his estrangement and, with it, his interest and investment in the film, which makes Parasites a film that works for both demanding audiences and mall popcorn gobblers. In this sense, the differentiating exoticism that the codes, uses and customs of Asian films and, especially, Korean films can still produce in the West today, works very much in favor of Parasites.
Think of Oldboy (maximum exponent of South Korean cinema): does it not also have a similar component of unpredictability? It is commendable the smoothness with which, after each new surprise curve, Parasites he manages to redirect the film in a way only up to a few Scorceses, Finchers, Nolans and Tarantinos.
What in other productions would easily fall into the sack of disappointments is here recycled to become an element that adds. When we discover the sophisticated and tedious way that one of the characters uses light switches to emit Morse code to communicate with the Park family, it is tempting to think that we are looking at a key that will be essential in the future, and that it will serve to reveal to the Parks what's cooking in their house.
Instead, the key becomes a door: the way in which the Morse message card is played at the end of the film has only one possible effect on the viewer: that of splitting his soul in two. It doesn't matter whether the Parks discovered the hoax or not. because plot conflicts have long since played out on that level.
Still from Parasites (2019), directed by Joon-ho Bong
Smooth evolution towards the abyss of the two Korean families
And this is what happens in the film from minute one, this capacity for constant discovery being one of the reasons that make it magnetic and unforgettable. The expectations, the conflicts from which they are born and the repercussions they produce, evolve in a subtle, padded and pianissimo way. The initial problems Parasites they spring from pizza boxes with badly turned corners or from the lack of Wi-Fi coverage. The last problems are a blow to the forehead towards the ethics and morals of the human race as a whole.
If we add to all this a perfect technical invoice, a soundtrack that goes unnoticed (with all the good that this entails) and a construction of characters that impeccably obeys the maximum don't tell: show it, it's easy to see why Parasite is such a masterpiece of a movie. It is easy to understand why critics have given up on Parasites.
The construction of the characters and the drunkenness of subtle details with which Boong Joon-ho builds before our eyes the cinematographic surprise of the year are issues that deserve their own article. Suffice it to analyze the amount of information we receive from the mother of the wealthy family in her first sequence:
1. Idle, she spends the morning sleeping.
2. Anything related to the United States is a guarantee of quality, going as far as to emphasize that his son's toy arrows must be very good because they were imported from the United States.
3. Right after confessing that the girl is getting bad grades, threat the new professor to stop having his services if the quality of his classes are not up to those of his predecessor (which makes the threat meaningless)
4. Despite raising the new teacher's salary to "compensate for inflation," he meticulously counts the bills he puts in the envelope and even pulls out an extra one.
Still from the movie Parasite, by director Bong Joon Ho
And so with all the characters in all the scenes, which work like cakes to return to again and again in search of new discoveries. The way in which everyone (even the dogs) follows the wealthy head of the family as soon as he returns home (perhaps exaggerating how the one who brings home the bread is the genuine engine that keeps that family going).
Either the constant burden of the actions and words of the humble head of the family or the subtle indications that suggest that the poor family functions as a cohesive whole, while the rich family is neatly and orderly unstructured in a dysfunction hidden under a blanket of well-being, security and hot food. Within the almost perfect impartiality of Parasites, this is one of the clearest criticisms that it offers us: families, better if they are united.
The Godfather, Twelve Angry Men y Schindler's List they are complementary films that it would be unfair to put in order. Rankings and tops exist because the human being's tendency to put order in the environment helps to simplify their reality (and also because it gives very good results in terms of clicks and traffic). There is no such thing as Best Movie of 2019 or Best Movie Ever. But we understand each other, right? Each cinematographic creation corresponds to its place and time (not to mention the viewing conditions and expectations).
That said, if in Postposmo If we were asked about the best films of the 2010s that we are about to finish, we would break out in a sweat, but we would know that somewhere on the list there would be room for The Great Beauty, La la land, Birdman, The Wolf of Wall Street, Interstellar and obviously Parasites.