Sinking to metaphorical depths— Parasite review
Wow! This is so metaphorical!
One can hardly avoid describing such an observation as hackneyed and, rather ironically, void of depth. Yet, when that same remark is exclaimed by lead character Ki-woo in Bong Joon-Ho’s class-war satire, Parasite, it is strikingly clever. Long praised for his oeuvre’s allegorical “pertinence” (well, of course, it’s about class!), the sui generis auteur uses Parasite as a vehicle to confront the wishy-washiness of that praise. Under the surface , Parasite cunningly operates as a parodical metacritique of the class-war thriller genre to which it belongs.
As allegorical as it may all seem, Parasite isn’t reliant on some dystopian flight of fancy; rather, its characters inhabit an all-too-familiar stratified landscape. In this microcosm, we encounter two families- the strapped-for-cash Kims and the patrician Parks- in a symbiotic relationship. But whether this symbiosis is one of mutualism or parasitism remains unclear. And in the case of the latter, the household we classify as the parasite, as opposed to the host, serves as a mere echo of our own political inclinations. Bong abstains from spoon-feeding us any discrete identification.
The film opens with a shot descending from ground level to the Kims’ squalid semi-basement home at the rear end of a Seoul street. In this subterranean underbelly, the Kims barely eke out a living as the family’s college-aged son Ki-woo and his sister Ki-jung scurry around attempting to leech off the upstairs shops’ wifi. Almost immediately, Parasite ’s camerawork establishes a literal upstairs-downstairs construct that underscores the Kims’ pitiful position on the pecking order. Then, by a stroke of luck, Ki-woo bags a lucrative tutoring job for the Parks’ daughter, courtesy of a better-off pal’s recommendation and Ki-jung’s knack for document forgery. In due time, the family of four, under dubious premises, are employed for service jobs by the Parks. In their impenetrable manor, the nouveaux riches are far too insulated by privilege to catch onto their schemes. But it’s not all smooth sailing from there; in their aspirational chase for wealth, the Kim clan is forced to confront the fellow workers they’ve displaced- those belonging to the same pack, hungry for a taste of the meager remains of capital that has trickled down from the top.
Parasite is not an idealistic wet dream of progressivism so much as a metacritique of our tendency to search for that progressivism in culture. The film is enlightening, but not in the way it’s been acclaimed as some step-by-step guidebook to class liberation. In fact, during the epilogue when we encounter Ki-woo back in the hovel where we first found him, it feels as if Bong has entirely eschewed any utopian vision of proletarian upward-mobility. Instead, he digs into that festering wound of class warfare with a realist worldview, accentuating the material conditions which birth and exacerbate these divides. At its core, Parasite is a film that doesn’t hesitate to tease viewers virtually drooling at the chance to praise any film with an innocuous “so metaphorical!”. Especially when, for those same viewers, these events exist exclusively within the parameters of the silver screen.
‘Parasite’ is out in the UK on 7 February.
