Post by clayton12 on Aug 16, 2019 9:59:03 GMT
Here's some comments I originally posted over here, for anyone who might be interested:
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) has a loveable family of impoverished, virtually unemployed scam artists at its core. They live in a grungy basement apartment, sponge a wi-fi connection from a neighbour, and fold pizza boxes on a commission basis to make ends meet. They’re not so much out-and-out criminals like the family from the previous year’s winner at Cannes, but they take the outlook that the odds are stacked against them and they adjust their moral compass accordingly in their search for paid work.
When the son manages to con his way into a tutoring job for a fabulously wealthy family, he sees opportunities to scam jobs for the rest of the family, and one by one his sister and parents install themselves into their new household. All this makes for a witty and entertaining farce, as the stakes get progressively higher and the plans more elaborate and outrageous with each family member to be absorbed. If anything, Bong moves things along a little too quickly, and when the inevitable and somewhat predictable third act arrived, I thought maybe it would have been nicer to take a little more time getting there. Except that what had been set up as the predictable climax wasn’t. Things take a sudden turn, the tone starts changing wildly, it’s not clear who the main characters are anymore, and the whole thing heads off to god knows where.
This is Bong Joon-ho back at the top of his game, maybe his best film since Memories of Murder.
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) has a loveable family of impoverished, virtually unemployed scam artists at its core. They live in a grungy basement apartment, sponge a wi-fi connection from a neighbour, and fold pizza boxes on a commission basis to make ends meet. They’re not so much out-and-out criminals like the family from the previous year’s winner at Cannes, but they take the outlook that the odds are stacked against them and they adjust their moral compass accordingly in their search for paid work.
When the son manages to con his way into a tutoring job for a fabulously wealthy family, he sees opportunities to scam jobs for the rest of the family, and one by one his sister and parents install themselves into their new household. All this makes for a witty and entertaining farce, as the stakes get progressively higher and the plans more elaborate and outrageous with each family member to be absorbed. If anything, Bong moves things along a little too quickly, and when the inevitable and somewhat predictable third act arrived, I thought maybe it would have been nicer to take a little more time getting there. Except that what had been set up as the predictable climax wasn’t. Things take a sudden turn, the tone starts changing wildly, it’s not clear who the main characters are anymore, and the whole thing heads off to god knows where.
This is Bong Joon-ho back at the top of his game, maybe his best film since Memories of Murder.
