Parasite (new Bong Joon Ho movie)

(if the joker won best picture it would have guaranteed a second trump term btw)

Trump issues Executive Order declaring JOker best picture

damn the cheeto-in-chief has gone too far this time

please enjoy this gif of bong joon ho giggling at his oscar pic.twitter.com/6ErVC8NEef

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) February 10, 2020

hah! that is so charming

bernie should neg the electorate into voting for him by calling them a bunch of locals

I saw this for the second time last night and I went from loving it (first time) to thinking it was an absolutely flawless masterpiece. So wild that it won BD and BP oscars!

I watched Parasite last night. Really enjoyed it, and I continue to get more out of it the more I consider it--although I feel a little let down because of the hype cycle (and watching it so late in the cycle).

I have this idea stuck in my head that the structure of the film mimics the sort of flowing structure of their house. The screenplay moves you from scene to scene the way a Louis Kahn building might guide you through blended spaces--and it hides a lot of the functional story scaffolding with tight writing, the way the house (and Kahnian structures) hides away all its functional bits. Both the architecture of the house and the relationships between characters have "served" and "servant" spaces.

long overdue recognition too for South Korean cinema, which has been producing some of the best films of the past two decades.

btw Scorsese has played no small role in championing SK filmmakers, and I think he wd've looked happier about this at the Oscars if his film hadn't been shut out.

tbf parasite was shorter

good architectural take, Unctious

Hiding away all the functional bits:

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2019-10/8/22/asset/33868f2ff72e/sub-buzz-2027-1570575066-1.png

The 2nd floor was CGI and added in post. Individual rooms were separate sets on soundstages. So, no visiting the Parasite home, unless its this miniature (6 parts):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvdpE1YSzYg

Hasn't Tarantino done a lot more to champion SK film?

Bong thanked Tarantino in his speech too, specifically for years of talking up his early films before anyone else in America paid him any attention.

(More recently Tarantino had a one-off 35mm print of Okja commissioned, and screened it at his theatre as a first-run engagement for a week after it first came out on Netflix. Then brought it back for a week the next month as the back half of double features with King Kong, Free Willy, Razorback and Babe: Pig In The City. And changed the vegan hot dogs at the snack bar to "Okja dogs.")

I think the Tarantino-led jury giving Oldboy the Grand Prix in Cannes is a milestone too.

Watched it today, finally.

This movie is absolutely incredible, and deserved all the awards and more.

Saw this again and liked it a lot more the second time

Here's a fun thing I learned a lot from

https://zenkimchi.com/featured/cultural-details-you-missed-in-parasite

cool, thanks

we saw this last night and loved it, not much to add here though.

Really liked how this review dealt with the film as critique and it's awards success

"What, if anything, can we make of the fact that a film ostensibly dedicated to satirising the rich has been praised so extensively by the very individuals and institutions who uphold this order?"
Rebecca Liu on Bong Joon-ho’s 'Parasite'https://t.co/LWqyxBN2hS

— Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (@anothergaze) February 13, 2020

I do recommend this read:

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/parasite-bong-joon-ho-interpreter-oscars-sharon-choi-1203505571/

That’s beautiful. As a bilingual who has also done work as a translator/interpreter, I really relate to her feelings about having to choose between languages and I think I feel the same way about music as she does about film.

Hey I finally saw this!

it was pretty good

do they have Miranda rights in South Korea? that was weird

welcome to parasite club

xp i think they have those rights, but cops aren't required to recite them. seemed to me like a kind of subtle character joke about the detective, that he loved to watch american crime shows and relished the opportunity to read rights.

Similar to the What's App / KakaoTalk thing, it may just be a localization/translation choice.

that's what I suspected - I mean it seems entirely plausible that the Korean legal system would incorporate such rights, wildly implausible that they would use the American term tho

I liked this overall but was a little put off by ultimately how sympathetic every character was. I'm sure that's appealing to the Academy and yr average viewer, but it leaves the class analysis a little toothless, very "welp that's just the way things are, everyone's trapped in it!" which I don't find particularly enervating or insightful.

just caught this over the weekend as well. i really loved it! Can't get over some of the amazing shots. I'm definitly going to watch it again .

I liked this overall but was a little put off by ultimately how sympathetic every character was. I'm sure that's appealing to the Academy and yr average viewer, but it leaves the class analysis a little toothless, very "welp that's just the way things are, everyone's trapped in it!" which I don't find particularly enervating or insightful.

This is an extremely weird criticism to me. Why should the class of any of the characters have made them inherently unsympathetic?

Yeah, I wonder if one of the things that made this such an across-the-board appealing movie was that it refused to be drawn into the narrative that class inequality necessitates one (or the other) class being maladaptive if not downright evil.

sorry you didn't find it more enervating!

yeah it's good. There were a bunch of moments where I was trying to place what they specifically reminded me of (Hitchcock? Haneke?) and I was failing

Why should the class of any of the characters have made them inherently unsympathetic?

it obscures who really benefits in a very real way from the existing class structure, for one thing. Because, look, the rich suffer too, and are not mean people! But it also engenders a kind of apathy/helplessness - without a villain, or someone either articulating or exemplifying why the class structure is how it is in the first place - it just makes the class system seem insurmountable, something that cannot be fought against or changed. Which, admittedly is tempered a little bit by the delusional hopefulness of the conclusion, indicating that some kind of aspirational hope (even if it is just to become a rich family again) still exists, no matter how unrealistic. But of course poor people having unrealistic dreams of becoming rich is one of those things that helps to keep the class system functioning.

xps

oh I see Eric already said it better :)

xps

like, "Society" this is not. It's portrayal of aspirational poor people is nuanced and insightful (I lol'd at someone calling this Crazy Poor Asians), and probably novel for the Academy, since Hollywood has generally stopped making movies about real people.

this was basically The Class System as a Series of Unfortunate Events

I would be extremely down for someone to remake and improve upon "Society" tbh

film is not without its flaws but omg I love it so

I really just want someone to give it a real ending. keep in the wonderfully revolting practical effects and cartoonish class commentary obv

in the era of rebooted everything/current political climate I could see it working really well but I don't think it's a "property" that has much cachet, unlike other horror franchises, unfortunately.

it's funny to read American reviews of it at the time (ex. Variety) that are all aghast at the disgusting effects and yet curiously make no mention of the sledgehammer obvious class politics. I give Yuzna a huge amount of credit for not pulling any punches in either department.

Idk I could see a Blumhouse type crew picking up the rights for cheap, getting some up and coming arty horror director to gussy it up a bit and leverage the insane premise in advertising--you know what fuck it I'm just gonna write the thing on spec brb

cool, will cobble together a few mil from my production company for ya

quick who's a cheaper tom holland equivalent for the lead

it obscures who really benefits in a very real way from the existing class structure, for one thing. Because, look, the rich suffer too, and are not mean people! But it also engenders a kind of apathy/helplessness - without a villain, or someone either articulating or exemplifying why the class structure is how it is in the first place - it just makes the class system seem insurmountable, something that cannot be fought against or changed. Which, admittedly is tempered a little bit by the delusional hopefulness of the conclusion, indicating that some kind of aspirational hope (even if it is just to become a rich family again) still exists, no matter how unrealistic. But of course poor people having unrealistic dreams of becoming rich is one of those things that helps to keep the class system functioning.

It's established pretty clearly that while the rich family has their own set of issues, they are an entire universe away from the things that both poor families are dealing with. There's nothing threatening the existence of the rich family in the story until the confrontation at the end and their danger is completely driven by the rich father's actions/lack of empathy.

You are treating one of the strongest aspects of this movie (its treatment of all its characters as recognizable, relatable human beings whose motivations were driven as much by personality as by circumstance) as if it was a negative.

that's true, but only because personalized drama tends to not be very useful when it comes to class analysis. So I have no problem praising this movie for the sympathy of its characterizations, which it does very well, just also noting that that kind of emphasis undercuts any meaningful class commentary.

(and that concludes this episode of Stalinist Film Criticism)

For once, a recipe post where the introductory story is in fact crucial.

https://thetakeout.com/recipe-how-to-make-ram-don-noodles-from-parasite-movie-1841769317

Also, along the lines of a couple of pieces posted recently upthread:

https://tropicsofmeta.com/2020/02/17/reading-colonialism-in-parasite/

that's true, but only because personalized drama tends to not be very useful when it comes to class analysis. So I have no problem praising this movie for the sympathy of its characterizations, which it does very well, just also noting that that kind of emphasis undercuts any meaningful class commentary.

Making this movie more like a Haenecke film would not improve it.

no disagreement there, I can't stand Haneke

Outis, your response is interesting - it's funny tho, I feel like most of the negative reactions i've heard on the movie (which are not numerous obv) have been to do with finding the class analysis sledgehammer-y in the sense of "poor good, rich bad."

what's fascinating to me is how clearly it's the system which creates the poor/rich gulf that's evil here, and how we see the ways it infects people (parasitically) based on their relative class positions. so yeah, everyone is bad, but the ways they're bad and the kinds of harm they do are specific, and not symmetrical.

"poor good, rich bad."

dunno what movie these people watched tbh! Seemed very nuanced to me. The poors do some shitty things (get people fired, perpetuate fraud, struggle with/murder other poors), the rich do some shitty things (primarily acting snooty and entitled), but every character is given some shading to indicate that there is never much in the way of malice on anyone's part.