Parasite is a surprising but deserving success

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.

I definitely want Tom Hanks to be my neighbour

The famous acting coach Sandy Meisner is  credited with first coming up with often-quoted saying that ‘acting is reacting’. What Meisner is suggesting is that actors should be active listeners during a performance and there is no better listener than Tom Hanks.

At the start of A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Hanks gives a performance of almost Zen-like concentration as Fred Rogers, beloved host of Mr Rogers Neighbourhood which for years was one of America’s favourite TV shows.

If you don’t know who Fred Rogers was I would strongly recommend the documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbour, which is currently on Netflix. Suffice to say that for hundreds of thousands of Americans from the late 1960s to the turn of the millennium Mr Rogers was their surrogate friend, counsellor, parent, and someone they could turn to.

Often when you are dealing with biopics what you end up with is very good impersonation or imitation like Jamie Foxx in Ray (2004) or Renee Zellweger in Judy (2019). Hanks goes beyond that in this film; in one of the best performances of a distinguished career he inhabits Mr Rogers. The opening sequence is almost a note-perfect channelling of the famous host,

We get the chance to see this because he is not the subject of the film. The film is based on a famous Esquire magazine article on Rogers by interviewer and feature writer Tom Junod. He went into the assignment sceptical about Rogers’s inherent goodness but, as the article makes clear, he became a convert. It’s an extraordinary read.

In the film Junod is fictionalised as Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a cynical and conflicted journalist who is given the Rogers assignment almost as a punishment. A new father himself Vogel is beset by troubles not least his workaholism and his fraught relationship with his own father (Chris Cooper) who has just re-appeared on the scene.

Vogel is sceptical to the point of outright opposition to Fred Rogers but as their lives entwine he becomes aware that maybe it is not the holier than thou act that he had assumed. Since he is not at the centre of the story we can watch Fred Rogers on the periphery, reacting for all he’s worth. It’s a remarkable thing to see.

The story is deftly told by Marielle Heller and the quality of the performances, especially from the leads, draws us in without being overly sentimental. In a neat move the production design renders moments from the real world as if they were in Rogers world, thus immersing the audience more and more into the story.

The potential for schmaltz is high, especially in what is ostensibly a feelgood finale. However this is undone by an enigmatic final shot which hints at hidden depths and gives the ending of the film an unexpected emotional weight.

Hanks is Oscar-nominated for his performance, his first nomination in 20 years remarkably, in the most competitive Best Supporting Actor race for years. No one would grudge the statuette going to Brad Pitt, as expected, but for my money Oscar should be going home with Hanks.