Parasite (new Bong Joon Ho movie)

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.

I don't know anything about the Korean higher education system, but one of the themes I got from the movie was that the brother and sister were more than qualified for school, but just ... couldn't afford it? Couldn't get in? I wasn't clear. Is that just a setup to satirize the bourgeois rich mom, who can't tell a not formally educated pair of imposter tutors from the real thing? Or is it sticking it to the schools, who are just an extension of class and wealth entitlement? If you are impoverished in Korea, are there scholarships and the like to help you through school? Or can you be more than qualified but still be excluded by the higher education system?

I think Min mentions that Ki-woo has taken the exam a couple of times after his military service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Scholastic_Ability_Test. I think the problem is that they can't get into the universities where it would make any sense to go, as Ki-taek says, there's 500 graduates ready to take any security guard job that comes up. And note that Ki-jeong wants to study arts (like the protagonist in Burning, who came from a farmer background but studied literature). The thing is, I'm really not sure how working class they are supposed to be, the mom is an accomplished athlete, the dad a somewhat good driver.

The feeling I get is just that South Korea is still a very new society - colonized until 1945 at the least, probably more accurately to say sometime after the Korean war, then governed by military dictatorship until 1992 - and films like Burning and Parasite show the rules of the society is still kinda up in the air. The idea that you'd do what your dad did, and stay in the same class as him, doesn't really apply. It's stratifying right now, as the first post-dictatorship generation is growing up.

the dubious distinctions btwn ppl based on the presence or absence of a formal education translates pretty universally (as we've seen by the movie's reception)

I honestly disagree completely, lol. I really think people are misreading it.

they're folding-up-pizza-boxes wifi-stealing class!

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

It's hard for me to decide between Parasite, Memories of Murder, and Mother (which I just watched). All three are masterpieces to me. Can't believe I've missing out on Bong Joon-Ho all this time. I think the consensus is less strong on his other movies but I'll see The Host next

i live in South Korea and find this analysis iffy

pretty cool imo!

Barring a total anomaly, PARASITE will end 2019 with the highest US per screen average of the year: $131,072, the 6th highest of all time for a live-action film. #Parasite pic.twitter.com/JWSUPqR66i

— Erik Anderson (@awards_watch) December 22, 2019

wow

watched this for the second time the other day, still slightly in awe of it tbh

Fred B in botched class analysis shocker

This French poster of PARASITE is something else. pic.twitter.com/WJ8QF8SOJI

— ㅤnαkul.ㅤ (@itsNaCool) January 6, 2020

that poster is rad. is it for sale anywhere?