Bong Joon Ho's latest film is everything a great Korean flick could and should be. Taut, suspenseful, funny, wickedly dark, erotic, and replete with things that go bump in the night. By dispatching ample screams and shocks borne out of socioeconomic dread and anxiety, he is now regarded as the country’s finest cinematic auteur (alongside his contemporary Chan-wook Park), who’s also fine-tuned his work to real world strifes of modern class warfare. 2006’s “The Host” battled wealth inequality and industrialized pollution run amok by way of an unnamed and unknowable monster wreaking chaos in the streets of Seoul; 2013’s equally radiant “Snowpiercer” threw everything in with the kitchen sink, gifting viewers a perfect allegory for the horrors of struggling to ascend an insurmountable economic mountain. And then there’s 2017’s “OKJA,” the director’s most beloved and commercially celebrated work, which ticked off every imaginable world offender: greedy corporations, ratings hungry media conglomerates, and a too-big-to-fail meat and food industry. “Parasite” by contrast is less Orwellian tragedy than fine-toothed scalpel wielded as a cudgel. It opens by showing us an impoverished family struggling to find wifi in their flood prone semi-basement, wherein the smells of piss and hopelessness permeate every crevice of their homestead. In desperate need of a lifeline — father, son, mother and daughter soon find themselves working as servants for a family who are as just as clueless and unsympathetic as they are rich. The methods our protagonist family employs to gain access to this fortress may not be kosher, but we tolerate it because we’re privy to their dashed hopes, sorrows and misfortunes.
Some critics have cited “Parasite” as the movie “Joker” wanted to be, yet the films share several parallels: as the global wealth gap continues to widen, and as climate change yields even more catastrophic results for the poorest populations, it’s not difficult to see why “Parasite” has accrued well over $100 million at the international box office, while “Joker” is on its way to a cool $1 billion. The 99% is clearly fed up with the 1% and its disastrous austerity policies, yet that anger is manifesting not only in film, but protests all around the world. Just look to Chile and Hong Kong, former autocratic strongholds, and Paris, a long-anointed bastion of democracy and “people power.” The masses are pushing back against the slightest increases in taxation and restrictions over their self-governance, with citizens (both poor and wealthy alike) risking their lives to fight back. ‘Joker’ should in fact be viewed as a western companion piece to ‘Parasite,’ since these themes are not at all defined by east versus west. These sunless dramas have plenty to say about the manners in which the poor are allowed to cross paths with the rich, and the results are devastating. Arthur Fleck kills a late-night personality on live television, his calls for an uprising ignite a revolution against Gotham’s elite, and what’s left in his carnage’s wake is a lonely vagabond relegated to four eternal, white walls. The family in “Parasite” similarly experiences a harsh dose of reality when they not only leave the home they pine for, but return to one that is decimated by a torrential downpour. It’s enough to make anyone homicidal, yet not at all uncommon an occurrence for the poorest neighborhoods in the developed world. The economic fault lines have been drawn for some time, but as these two films suggest they are by no means etched in stone.
These filmmakers have both touched on something that’s festered under the surface long before the 2008 Financial Crisis, or even the Bolshevik Revolution 100 years ago. The haves and the have-nots have never had to duke it out under the threat of a global climate emergency, and it will be an abhorrent, transmutative calamity just watching these contests play out over the next thirty years. Yesterday, researchers published a damning report warning that rising sea levels could triple the amount of affected populations already prone to coastal flooding. With over 300 million people sitting below these high-tide lines, these projections point to an impending “economic and humanitarian catastrophe.” And earlier today, Chile announced it would be withdrawing from its scheduled APEC and U.N. Climate Summits, citing turbulent social and political unrest. These are no longer isolated incidents, but a reaction to the arsonists being left in charge of the fire(s). This economic despotism, which is long overdue for a colonic, will need to decide whether the fortune-hoarding bourgeoise and ruling class can survive another generation while the devouring effects of capitalism put at risk our very existence. This parasitical absorption and accumulation of wealth cannot outrun the fires, rain, and polluted air that jeopardize the status quo. The neoliberalism of today has spawned the populist fervor of tomorrow, yet one question remains: do we still have time to do anything about it? Maybe if we stopped believing the factious lie, that working harder, smarter, faster will someday make us rich — we’d figure it out.
“PARASITE” a.k.a. “Best Laid Shams” Rated R. Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes.
