Parasite (new Bong Joon Ho movie)

lol

Idk what’s so hard to understand about that ... it may not literally end w a community center in the slums but it’s vision ends up being similarly limited imo ... I honestly thought the film would take its initial premise to its logical conclusion and end w the family murdering and replacing the original one but instead his plan is to make enough money to buy the house his dad is trapped in ... kind of a depressing ending & not in the sense that it pointed out a depressing reality but that it created a depressing reality ...

Idk i thought lots of parts of this movie were good but it’s not “get out” or “gone girl” level as far as having the courage of its ideological convictions imo ... it also feels like it’s getting a substantial critical boost bc of proximity to the new socialist zeitgeist

Having the family kill/replace the other in the end would not have made it a better or "more courageous" movie, just a lazier and less resonant one.

but it's funny you should make a Get Out comparison 'cause this Outline piece ties it to Us as part of the "Revolutionary Gothic"

Interpreting Parasite and Us in tandem, regardless of their differences, helps us understand crucial and complicated elements they share. In both movies, the violence enacted by the subterranean specters is emotionally and morally fraught — exactly who deserves to suffer or die like this, and why? Is it doing anyone any good? Once we understand these movies as Revolutionary Gothic, it becomes clear that’s the wrong question. We’d have to start with: Why wouldn’t we expect spectacular violence to erupt from the hidden violence of forcing human beings underground? Why would we expect the ghosts we’ve created not to haunt us?

Such violence may not be successful in destroying the dominant order; it may not even be coherent. Parasite makes a series of intricate moves with its characters’ insurrectionary impulses: Geun-sae nurtures an unhinged love for the patriarch of the Park family, to whom he sends a series of increasingly deranged, wholly unreceived Morse code messages from his basement cell. When Geun-sae emerges from his dungeon, he genuflects to his idol Mr. Park, even as the circumstances that have led him to revere the man collapse all around him. In the end, it’s the father of the Kim family, Ki-taek, who stabs Mr. Park to death. There are many reasons that lead to this final murder, but the most immediate is the consuming rage Ki-taek feels when he sees that Mr. Park finds the body of Geun-sae — a man who died gasping out his respect for his perceived better — repulsive and stinky.

Here, violence is less a clean solution to oppression than a messy response to despair and desperation. The violence doesn’t even necessarily disrupt the hierarchies it responds to, as we see in Parasite’s catharsis-denying ending. Revolutionary Gothic is less about the inevitability of overthrow than the inevitability of rupture, of all that haunts us coming back for a reckoning. These stories don’t try to comfort us with victory; they unsettle us with the implications of ongoing defeat.

https://theoutline.com/post/8279/parasite-us-revolutionary-gothic?zd=1&zi=ojs7ot2u

Having the family kill/replace the other in the end would not have made it a better or "more courageous" movie, just a lazier and less resonant one.

― Simon H., Sunday, 24 November 2019 20:05 (fourteen minutes ago) link

Lol how is it lazier? Sincere question. There was never a moment I was really *surprised* by this film—despite not knowing the details of who was going to be stabbed or when from a symbolic POV it doesn’t matter; the entire story exists as documentation of a shared status quo that reaffirms its audiences understanding of the way things are rather than undermining or subverting those expectations

Coincidentally, I was looking up the real-life cases after watching the movie, and it turns out the police finally solved them in the past few months

It wants to be get out but it’s more like black panther

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Sunday, November 24, 2019 1:25 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

But really it's like Us in some very obvious ways.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Sunday, November 24, 2019 1:28 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

get out > parasite >>>>>>>>> Us >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> black panther

Simon H otm - the Kims replacing the Parks would have been a terrible ending.

The scene where they’re reunited again at the end is a fantasy and they all know it - Ki Woo was never going to be rich enough to save his father. They’re all stuck in the same place they’ve always been because late stage capitalism and the dream of upward mobility is a lie. Maybe that’s not a surprising ending but it is the logical one to me and which also underscores Bong’s aversion from making heroes out of the plucky poor family against the evil rich people. There are no such heroes in (t)his world.

he was a little disappointed in that the film is no longer relevant in the same way. Then quickly buttressed that with "well, obviously it's good they solved the murders"

Lol I understand feeling slightly annoyed in his position, but c'mon. Anyway I read the murders are past the statute of limitations so the movie is still very relevant: in both the movie and irl, justice can't be served!

There was never a moment I was really *surprised* by this film—despite not knowing the details of who was going to be stabbed or when from a symbolic POV it doesn’t matter; the entire story exists as documentation of a shared status quo that reaffirms its audiences understanding of the way things are rather than undermining or subverting those expectations

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:25 PM (yesterday)

Oh, I forgot a third: Geun-sae watching his wife die on the floor of the basement a few yards away from him, unable to move closer or offer her any sort of comfort in her final moments. (Almost too on-the-nose, at least as regards the United States.)

But anyway the point I am trying to make is that if I want to be challenged by a discursive presentation of novel ideas – I'll read an essay.

A film can have the most banal ideas in the world (Post-industrial capitalism pits poor people against one another for the opportunity to catch rich people's crumbs in degrading service positions??? You don't say!) and still move me with the force of its vision.

I also found the movie struggling to hold itself together in the second half fwiw

Gratifyingly, though, the normal non-critic people whom I've talked to also acknowledge it doesn't quite work but are thrilled anyway. In that respect, it reminds me of the Get Out era two years ago when a mass audience responded to a film that didn't condescend to them because it dared to work in populist terms.

this was great. why not have a popular, accessible movie that addresses class issues? I think it's great that a foreign film is doing this well at the box office in the US as well.

the most banal ideas in the world (Post-industrial capitalism pits poor people against one another for the opportunity to catch rich people's crumbs in degrading service positions??? You don't say!)

shrug

I saw this tonight and was very impressed by it. It's hard to say I "loved" it bc it's not really a loveable film, but it was an intense experience, visually excellent, and an unusual mix of tones and styles (which I found to be a strength rather than weakness).

The Marxist allegorical stuff *is* on the nose, but I can't say it was *too* on the nose at all -- if anything I thought the film had a lot of fun with the class tropes by blending in just the right amount of absurdism.

subtlety is overrated

The reality of class is so blatant that I'm not sure depicting it subtly would be a good thing

Something about the moment the basement vault is first opened felt very, idk, Terry Gilliam? I liked that part of the film a lot, the sort of fissure in reality that happens.

I thought this was great. The descent into surreal absurdism that veered into violence was really well done and thrilling IMO.

I told my date when the family was getting drunk in the living room "this is going to blow up spectacularly" but I thought it was going to be more along the lines of the dad actually punching the mom

Yes the way that went down was great -- the set up is obviously leading to some kind of farcical moment where you find out the Parks are on their way back and everyone has to hide or sneak out (they're going camping and it's pouring rain!), but then the movie just smacks you over the head with a mallet.

this was really good but it bothered me that they let the old housekeeper in - why would they have done that? other than to move the plot forward, of course.

Because it was late and raining and she was begging and she seemed harmless and they had been drinking and the rest of the family figured they could just hide.

can I say the frottage sex scene was super hot?

Yeah and I agree, felt very real too.

can I say the dog eating skewered meat off the corpse was super hot?

that was super sexy

Someone remind me — who wound up jabbing the skewer into that dudes leg? I lost it in the whole melee.

This is pretty good -- I like the way the family careens around their employers' mansion -- til the last third, when Bong's approach is as blunt and heavy as that big rock. The social message, whatever it is, becomes a muddle.

Lots better than those last two annoyances he made tho.

I like the way the family careens around their employers' mansion

this was my fave part too. lots of crouched runs and slithers and silent hurrying up and down staircases. rapid rock-steady tracks along the x-axis. the bourgeois privilege of space

dog eating skewered meat struck me as a blue velvet rip, just the lil angle it's cocked at

loved the ghost scene

kind of had map's reaction to this for some reason--

it definitely shook me but i'm not sure i enjoyed the ride. idk so many "powerful" things leave me feeling exhausted these days.... like i think i respect that it's aiming to be a shakespearean tragedy about capitalism but it's also in the form of a 32 oz monster energy drink and it was all too much for me tbh.

--(despite tanking a 24oz monster as recently as 4:00 this morning) but it's fun to talk about w people it thrilled, which... is a real trick tbh

don't mean to sound so detached, it def thrilled me; i guess i mean people who had a rly good time being thrilled

Someone remind me — who wound up jabbing the skewer into that dudes leg? I lost it in the whole melee.

It was his side; that's why dude died. The mom did it.

I think it's too angry to work as a tragedy. That's why the violent conclusion worked for me. After a couple of hours of more or less black comedy, it suddenly descends into outright bloody rage.

well yeah. I prefer black comedy, which also has plenty o' rage

tbc, it definitely left me unsettled, idk if I'd say I "enjoyed the ride." I was extremely tensed up when the credits rolled.

i was giggling p much the entire time

Before all the screenings at the Lincoln Center movieplex, they're showing a NYFF clip where the cast brought out peaches to give the audience before the Q&A.

I couldn't imagine watching this again, in part because of the last third.

On the other hand, I'm glad it's a hit, and people were laughing at my screening.

ppl are speculating on getting AA *nods*

also I didn't like Snowpiercer at all.

This is a great audience movie! And it's funny! Until it's not.

I felt like the weird guy who was laughing a lot more than the rest of the audience in my very full theater.

Finally saw it this morning. Aesthetically I do think it's on another level from Bong, and more original than Burning, tbh. The conversation with Min in that crooked street is amazing. The way everything is so neat and liny in the rich house, so fussy and illogical everywhere else. The clothes hanging in front of the little window. Thematically, it's just another variation on The Housemaid, the fifth one I've seen I think. So I never really doubted it was going to go as crazy as it always does, and I do think it's less graphic than im Sang-soo's version from 2010. I think it has a lot of other things on it's mind than capitalism, tbh, the differences between people are more post-feudal, post-colonial and post-educational policy fuck up.

I don’t know if I’m alone in thinking Mother is his masterpiece?

Mother and Memories of Murder remain my favorites

It's not that I dislike them, but I don't get all the hoopla either. Like Lee Chang-dong's Oasis, they are just basically fine arthouse cinema for me. For years, it was just Hong Sang-soo or fuck off. I like both Burning and Parasite, though.

Finding out the house was designed and built from scratch blew me away.

His films are so compassionate, it kills me.