Although the quadruple Oscar success of Parasite is well deserved, it is – despite being a superb piece of cinema – still a big surprise. Partly because it is a foreign language film, partly because Bong Joon Ho is – in Hollywood terms – a niche director, but mostly because it strikes so close to home.
Watching the audience at the Dolby Theatre burst into rapturous applause when Jane Fonda announced the win – after an exquisitely timed pause – two questions came to mind. Has this crowd really reached peak wokeness, or has this crowd just not realised what they were watching? I’ll come back to this later.
Parasite is a stiletto-sharp satire on the class structure in South Korea. The Kim family are living a literally subterranean existence barely eking out a living folding pizza boxes, and holding mini celebrations whenever they are able to blag someone’s wifi signal.
By chance the son manages to get himself into the Park family household as a tutor for their teenage daughter. The Parks are members of the elite with more money than sense; theirs is a life of affluence and indolence motivated by trends and the desire for influence.
The boy spies an opportunity. In a series of hilarious set-pieces he inveigles jobs with the Parks for the rest of his family by ousting the incumbent staff. The Kims’ lives are transformed and their future seems bright. Until, that is, the Parks go away for the weekend and the Kims move in.
The gathering clouds of the roiling thunderstorm suggest a dark and sinister shift in mood. Bong has asked reviewers to respect the film’s secrets and who am I to gainsay him.
It is, as I said, a superb film. Beautifully directed, impeccably performed, and the production design is absolutely marvellous in terms of creating two separate but entirely authentic worlds for the two families. It’s a joy from start to finish.
But back to those questions I asked earlier. Was the Academy vote influenced by wokeness and all of the talk of a lack of diversity which peaked during the voting period? Or are Hollywood’s elite really so self-aware that they are in on the joke.
Those Academy voters for the most part are the Parks. A tiny minority blessed with an abundance of good fortune and a desire to tell other people how they should live their lives. They are the ones who live in eight-figure architect-designed homes while employing invisible, disposable people like the Kims to maintain their lifestyle.
A better writer than I – and believe me there are loads – would have a field day with this. It reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s famous essay about the party that conductor Leonard Bernstein threw in the 70s to introduce the Black Panthers to Manhattan’s plutocracy. To ensure there was no racial frisson, according to Wolfe, the Bernsteins only used white servants that night; the people of colour had the night off. That is a bit like what Oscar night felt like.
Maybe I am doing the Hollywood elite a disservice. Maybe they do get that the joke is on them. Maybe they have been in on it all along.
Whatever their motives it is hard to disagree with a very well deserved Oscar win for Parasite, a movie that deserves to go to the top of your must-see list.
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