PARASITE

The 2019 movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture is Parasite. It is a film from South Korea and is the first non-English film to win the award. And what a brilliant film it is. This is storytelling at its finest, with an engrossing marriage of script, cinematography, acting, and detail.

Director Bong Joon-ho weaves a tale that vacillates between drama and black comedy flawlessly. And just when you get comfortable with this vacillation, he throws in an unexpected twist that brilliantly turns the movie into a suspenseful thriller. As if that weren’t captivating enough, the entire film is a satire on societal classes that hammers down hard and heavy.

There are 10 main characters, and the actors that inhabit them are all impressive. However, I would be remiss not to highlight Kang-ho Song as the patriarch of the Kim family. His ability to convey emotions, and switch between them in seconds, without uttering a word was inspired. He could have you chuckling and then gut-wrenched with just the slightest movement and expression. He was the blue diamond among a cast of rubies and emeralds.

The story revolves around the Kim family and the Park family. The Kims are a family of little means who are not above con work to obtain an income. The Parks are an affluent family who breeze through the world of social elitism rather obliviously. The Kim family’s son soon cons his way into a job tutoring the Park family's daughter. Manipulating Mrs. Park, eventually each member of the Kim family ends up working for the Parks, though the Parks are unaware that any of the Kims are related. The deception of how each Kim obtains a position in the Park’s home is outrageously funny. Once they are all employed, however, things take a turn in a fantastic "what the hell?" moment! To provide more details would be a disservice to anyone who decides to view the film.

In the end, which family is the parasite remains uncertain. Is it the Kims living off the wealth of the Parks or is it the Parks living off the hard work of the Kims? The movie is quite clear though as it closes on its heartbreaking ending, that the wide gap of wealth disparity is the new norm, and the upward mobility of the working class is quite clearly the shadow of a bygone era. No doubt this is one reason the movie resonated so well to audiences worldwide.