Author | [Han] Lee Dong-jin
Excerpts | Xu Yuedong
There is no doubt that Bong Joon-ho's films have rewritten the history of Korean cinema. "Parasite" swept four Oscar awards and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, one of the rare achievements in film history. Why is Bong Joon-ho loved by the grand jury of film festivals around the world? One of the most important reasons is that Bong Joon-ho's film theme captures the pulse of today's society.
As a "film sociologist", Bong Joon-ho's films have always depicted the solidification and tearing between classes. "Parasite" is a story about the bottom of the bottom falling against each other. But unlike typical critical realism works, it is difficult for the audience to substitute for the weaker side, and the audience can no longer enjoy the film from the genre routine. Bong Joon-ho's films do not "purify" the mind with tragedy, but rather prompt the audience to begin to think about the social significance of this confusing struggle composition. The following is an excerpt from "The Whole Moment of Bong Joon-ho" with the permission of the publishing house.
The Whole Moment of Bong Joon-ho, by [Han] Lee Dong-jin, translated by Chun Hee, CITIC Publishing House, January 2021
Bong Joon-ho's films start with genre and end with betrayal genres
Bong Joon-ho's films have no shortage of turning points. The direction of the story or the personality of the characters is reversed at the last minute, giving the audience a blow in the head and guiding the audience to overturn all the previous clues. In contrast, this turning point is more like a real touchpoint that suddenly presents the core style of the story or the director's perspective, directly changing the main line of the film.
"Mother" transforms from the lofty maternal love of defending her son into the twisted stubbornness of the mother who tries to shield her son. "Snow Country Train" transforms from the scrappy revolution of the people living in the last car to the cold perspective of sociobiology that protects species and maintains a balance in the world. "Memories of a Killing" seems to be a police partner film in which the village criminal police believe in insight and the Seoul criminal police who promote scientific search to solve the outstanding case, but in the end, it presents the complex emotion of staring at the void in retrogressive time and space.
Bong Joon-ho's films start with genre and end with betrayal genres. His focus is always on the opposite side of the genre. According to the rules and conventions of the genre, every step of the story should be advanced according to the "plan", but Bong Joon-ho must silently push it into a bottomless pit of "no plan".
The turning point in Parasite is when Wen Guang presses the doorbell of the mansion in the midst of a rainstorm. Prior to this, Wen Guang was just a former maid in the mansion who was fired by Dong Yi (Lee Sun-kyun), representing only an individual; the moment she showed her intentions, she transformed into the whole family. The most important setting in Parasite is that it's not a story of two families but three families. During the film's release, the spoiler the studios wanted to stop was precisely about the existence of a third family.
Parasite movie poster
Wen Guang and Qin Se (Park Myung-hoon) appear as a family and fight with Ki-taek 's (Song Kang-ho) family in a mansion. Subsequently, the Dongyi family suddenly returned from camping due to heavy rain and were involved in this big battle. In this scene, the food renders a sense of tension, and the bowl of fried sauce udon noodles with Korean beef tenderloin is very interesting. It's a story about food, two cheap noodles mixed together, but with the addition of an expensive Korean beef.
Before the turning point, the story of "Parasite" unfolds in the contrast between the family of the low-class citizen Kiser and the home of the upper class Dong Yi. While Dong Yi's family is out camping, the Keize family drinks and has fun in the living room of the mansion, immersed in class fantasies. They expect that if the love relationship between their son Ji Woo (Choi Woo Sik) and Duo Hui (Jeong Ji Su) goes well, the two families may be able to achieve class parity through marriage. Kiser was already in a fantasy when he carried Dong Yi on the test drive, talking about two parents representing their respective families, defining this kind of co-multiplication in terms of "peer theory" ("You are both the head of the family, the boss of the company, and a lonely man." We go out together every morning, isn't that some kind of peer? I've always worked with this mentality"), even the family structure of a son and a daughter under my knees is exactly the same.
However, Keizer ignores the fact that in addition to four people, the Dongyi family has three dogs; the Kiser family has a lot of stove horse crickets. Ji Woo and Ji Ting (Park So-dan) seem to be full of spirit and insight in Dong Yi's mansion, but they are not Kevin and Jessica. Riding in the same car does not represent the sharing of ownership. Dong-eun thinks that Yoon-chae (Park Geun-rok) got this wrong and fires him. The original name of "Parasite" is "Pad Printing Painting", which two contrast items refer to? The Kiser family, who were drinking in the mansion and immersed in fantasy, finally understood that at this moment, their opponent was not the Dong Yi family, but the Wen Guang family. Keizer was familiar with cornering, but braked sharply halfway but slowed down, resulting in tragedy.
Both Kizer and Qinshi are losers in the capitalist system, which is essentially consistent. They all owned Castilla Cake Shop, operated poorly, and were both hunted down by the police. Later, he lived in seclusion in the basement of the mansion. Therefore, if Keeze needs to walk with people, that person should not be Dongyi, but Qinshi.
Stills from Parasite
However, the Kizers strenuously wanted to deny this. Kiser looked at Qin Shi's residence, shook his head and said to himself, "Can you survive in such a place?" This was his talisman, and he preferred to believe that he belonged to a different class than Qinshi. However, unlike his idea, there is no essential difference between semi-underground and basement. This gap space between the above and below ground, its name is not "half aboveground", but "half underground". Qin Shi heard Kiser's muttering and replied, "There are more than one or two people living in the basement, counting more than half of the ground." Qinshi's answer expanded the extension of his own class.
The fight between the Kiser family and the Wenguang family begins when Kiser falls down the steps with Ki-ting and Ki-woo. The Keize family, an alcoholic in the above-ground space, suddenly falls into the basement connected to the semi-underground, and engages in a deadly struggle with the opponent who occupies the territory first. The Keize family's dream of pursuing an above-earth paradise where the Dongyi family lived, but now they are fighting to escape the basement on the lower floor. Including the scene where Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) kicks down Wen Guang, who swears to climb up, the fight takes place mainly in the steps connecting the underground and above ground with the aisles. The reason this fight is so brutal is because the fear of the underground dominates the semi-underground world.
The lower classes have limited resources and can only engage in zero-sum game-style infighting
In fact, the struggle between the lower classes was staged before the Kiser family met the Wen Guang family. Parasite cleverly constructs the ascending and descending movements, as well as the theme of replacement. Kiser was able to become Dongyi's driver because he squeezed out the original Yin driver. Chung-sook became a maid because he got rid of Wen Guang. Even the Kiser family, who did not have a job in the opening part, was able to stack pizza boxes because the hourly workers who had previously worked part-time in the pizzeria were no longer working. And Ji Woo got a job as a tutor, of course, because Min Hyuk (Park Su-joon) wants to study abroad and make room.
The Kiser family initially occupied a position that was independently vacated by others, and later drove out others in a certain position. Min Hyuk, who left spontaneously as planned, was not of the same class as them, while Yoon Chauffeur and Wen Guang, who had been framed and expelled by them, belonged to the same class. Ultimately, the Keizers' position was the result of the proposals of the upper classes and the infighting among the lower classes. The struggle for survival of the Kisse family is always aimed at the same class. Because they believe that the resources in the hands of the lower class are limited, and if they want to take it for themselves, they can only engage in class infighting in the zero-sum game.
The lower classes believed in this because they had always been treated this way by the upper classes. Dong Yi praised Wen Guang's cooking skills, but said that "there are many aunts, and it is enough to find another one." He meets at the company to focus on whether the new product is compatible with mobile phones, but as his company name is Another Brick, he sees employees as bricks that can be replaced at will. For Dongyi, what is important is not the inherent attributes of employees, but the jobs composed of standardized labor, and he is the master of creating these positions.
Thus, for the Kiser family, those who have occupied the position they covet are not personality subjects of inherent attributes, but pre-occupants and enemies who must give way to themselves. Kiser suddenly expressed concern for Driver Yin at the living room wine table, and a drunken Kiting shouted, "Our problem is the first." Leave the driver alone, worry about us." At that moment, lightning thundered, and then Wen Guang rang the doorbell and the gates of hell opened.
To open the gates of hell to find the hermit, one must squeeze your body into the narrow space between the walls and the cupboards, parallel to the force. This step is difficult to complete on your own, and it will be smoother if someone pulls the cabinet in parallel at the same time. Wen Guang and Chung Shu pushed the door open together, and after descending into the world under the door, they quickly separated. Chung-sook sees The Diligent World living here for the first time, Wen Guang says that "the same migrant workers" and "equally unfortunate neighbors" try to achieve class unity, and Chung-sook says that "I am not an unfortunate neighbor" and wants to position herself in other classes. After Zhongshu got a job through the "bond of trust" of the upper class, he began to fantasize about class, calmly rejecting Wen Guang's use of the title of "sister", and cutting off the chain of sisterhood. Zhongshu's family threatened to call the police, first expressing disgust.
Bong Joon-ho's lower-class protagonists do not struggle with the upper class, they only fight with their own class
There are no evil people in the film. The characters in Parasite, regardless of their class, have never deliberately shown malice or deliberately committed evil. Keize killed someone accidentally, and his mood was understandable. Although Dong Yi's arrogant words and deeds were the fundamental motive that led to his killing, he did not deliberately ignore others. Much of the shame that overflows in Keeze's heart is due to accidentally overhearing Dong Yi and Lian Qiao (Cao Ruzhen) whispering under the living room table, in short, it is not intentional. The Kiser family and the Wen Guang family fought for life and death, and given their desperate situation, it was difficult to convict them. Before the murder, the two families had been unable to hide their gratitude and respect for the Dongyi family, and even said that having money would make people good.
Four people died in Parasite. Still, no one is damned. Since no one harbors naked malice, this is a fundamental tragedy. If Dong Yi is portrayed in the film as a completely evil person, his death can be attributed to evil human nature. However, Dong Yi died because of the class to which he belonged, not by a personal identity. The other three were the same. (Wen Guang said after being fatally injured: "Sister Zhongshu is a good person, but she kicked me.") Class is one of the core keywords of Bong Joon-ho's films.
With the exception of Parasite and Snow Train, which explicitly express this theme, most of his films, from Kidnapping the Dog at the Door to Tamako, are also set against the backdrop of class contradictions. Of particular note, however, is the question of "who fights whom". In Bong Joon-ho's debut novel, Kidnapping the Dog at the Door, apartment property clerk Hyun-nam (Bae Doo-na) is tracking down the suspect who killed the resident's pet dog. A total of three dogs are killed or in danger of being killed, and the two dogs that were actually killed are related to Yoon Soo (Lee Sung-jae). Yoon Soo works as a temporary lecturer at the university and racks his brains to get a university professorship, that is, to ensure a stable class position. He threw the chihuahua off the roof of his apartment and locked the Sish dog in the basement to kill him.
Stills from "Snow Train"
Therefore, the target of the struggle of the virtuous man should be the middle-class Yoon-so. Hyun-woo and Yoon-so have a brief chase, but in the end they still fail to catch him, or even grasp his identity. However, Hyun-nam meets the tramp Choi (Jin Leixia). Choi wants to eat the hungry Teddy raised by Yoon Soo's family, the third missing pet dog. After a fierce fight, Hyun-nam handed Cui over to the police.
Why doesn't Hyun-nam fight Yoon-so, but instead fight Choi? Why didn't Keize fight Dong Yi, but with Qin Shi? Why don't the lower-class men (the lower class in "Parasite" is summarized as the unique "dried radish flavor", and the virtuous men in "Kidnapping the Door Dog" inherit those "dried radishes") why not fight with the middle-class Yoon-so, but with the (most) bottom-up Choi? Why didn't the lower-class Kiser fight with the upper-class DongYi, but with the (lowest) lowest-class Qinshi?
Bong Joon-ho's lower-class protagonists do not struggle with upper-class people, they only engage in class infighting. Fight for jobs like the Kiser family, or fight to keep their jobs like the keno. (However, both the Kiser family and Keno eventually lost their jobs.) The core of class poverty lies in the capitalist system, but they ignore this essence or deliberately avoid it.
The subtle point is that Bong Joon-ho's films often distinguish between the bottom and the bottom. The people at the bottom of the film usually struggle not to fall to the bottom, and the family is their last reliance against the bottom. (The protagonists in Bong Joon-ho's films are mostly described as family units, which is not unrelated to this.) The family is the smallest unit of class, and this system is consolidated through generations. The family brings an innate frustration to the underclass, but it paradoxically becomes their last bastion against the lowest.
In "Mother", It is from this that Daojun (Yuanbin) and Zongba (Jin Hongji) are divided into light and dark. Zongba blames Do-joon because Do-joon has a mother (Kim Hye-ko), but he doesn't. (Do-joon's mother visits Jonghachi, who is in prison, and asks him, "Do you have no mother?", shedding tears of pity and guilt.) In "Tamagotchi", Tamako successfully escapes from the desperate situation, but countless super pigs can only fall into the abyss, also because Tamako has a sister (Ahn Seo Hyun), they do not.
Therefore, his wife Wenguang is indispensable to Qin Shi. Qin Shi has given up the desire to rise class and is satisfied with life in the basement, but if he wants to survive, he can only rely on Wen Guang's regular care. Because of Zhongshu's attack, Qin Shi lost this only family member, and at the same time lost the last straw of life, and finally raised his knife to pounce on Zhongshu's family. Qin Shi did not think that his real enemy might not be Keize but Dong Yi.
On the contrary, when the bottom layer brings the bottom layer home, Bong Joon-ho leaves a spark of hope in the movie. Such is the case with the orphan lord (Lee Dong-ho) who lost his brother in "The Monster of the Han River", and the little piglet who burrows into The Arms of Yuzi at the end of "Yuzi". However, it is no accident that the people rescued in both cases are very young. They do not pose any threat other than to provoke sympathy.
However, given the relationship with the upper class, there is no fundamental difference between the bottom and the bottom (i.e., the bottom of the bottom). "Not the bottom", that's just the assumption that the people at the bottom are trying to comfort themselves. After a vicious fight in the rainstorm, the Kiser family and the Wenguang family all returned to the underground. The Kiser family descended from a high-rise mansion to a semi-underground rental house, suffering from floods, and the scene was connected to the Scene of wenGuang's family, who was locked up in the basement and suffering. Qin Shi hit the wall with his brain door to send Morse code, and the sensor light on the steps of the mansion flashed, followed by the flashing of the entrance light of the flooded Kiser's house. (It seems that the tragedy began with lightning and the doorbell ringing in the middle of the night before the rainstorm.) When suffering, there is no difference between the bottom and the bottom.
Bong Joon-ho's films are not entirely devoid of characters who replace class infighting with antagonistic systems. However, they are all completely off the line at the end of the story or have been completely isolated halfway through. There is a character in "Kidnapping the Door Dog" who did not appear directly, but left a deep impression on the audience. This person is the security guard Bian Mou (Bian Xifeng) who once mentioned the boiler burning Jin Mou. Jin mou saw through the tofu slag project of the construction unit, and after being killed, he was "built into the wall with concrete".
He died in 1988, the year Seoul hosted the Olympics, and South Korea was in the midst of a construction boom, and the whole people were impetuous and immersed in the desire to rise in class. Curtis (Chris Evans), the leader of the last carriage of the fiery revolution in "Snow Train", only realizes at the end of the struggle that he is not the subject of the struggle, but is just part of the algorithm of the system's periodic cleaners, and then dies in an explosion. In "Parasite", Keizer, who subconsciously stabbed the class, is actually imprisoned in an underground prison forever.
The death of Kiting represents the disappearance of the ascending ladder of class
When the story of Parasite reaches its climax, the characters die one after another. Dong Yi died because he was at the apex of the class system and the patriarchal system. The death of Wen Guang and Qin Shi is not unrelated to the couple's objectified identity in the work. So, what is the reason for Kiting's death? The Kiser family can be described as the protagonists of this film, why is it Kiting who died? One-quarter of the folded pizza boxes were defective, and the culprit was Ki-taek; it was Ki-woo who took the landscape stone to the basement to murder Wen Guang and his wife under the pretext of reducing pain; and It was Ki-woo who came to the courtyard with a dinner knife in his hand, and it was Chung-sook who had intended to stab his wife to death. So, why was it Kiting who was killed?
At Kiser's house, Kitting's location is very unique. Ki-taek, Ki-woo, and Chung-sook all get jobs in a way that replaces others, but Ki-ting spontaneously creates a new position by instilling in Lian-jo about the necessity of art therapy, without taking anyone's place. Therefore, Kiting can be said to be the only character in the film who can achieve class rise without class infighting. Ji Woo and Ki Ze were hired after passing the test lectures and test drives required by Lian Qiao and Dong Yi respectively, but Ji Ting calmly ruled out this employment condition, showing the majesty of implementing her own will.
Kitting is the most suitable upper-class figure in the Kiser family. After Dong Yi's family leaves, Ji Woo sees Ji Ting's elegant demeanor in the bathtub, saying that Ji Ting, who "goes upstairs" to take a bath, is a very good match for "the atmosphere of the mansion" and looks "different from us". Immediately afterward, Ji Woo asks Ji Ting where she wants to live in this mansion, and Ji Ting replies, "Let me live in first." Ji Woo said, "I'm living here, drinking in the middle of the living room." It can be seen from this that Ji Woo is satisfied with this level of class relations, but Ji Ting is different. Kitting must officially move in and become a true upper class to be satisfied. That is to say, Ji Ting's desire to rise class is the strongest and the strongest ability, but she is killed at the end of the work, and what disappears at this time is actually the ladder of class rise. (Moreover, what killed Kitting was the diligent world who had completely lost her desire to rise in class.) ）
Moreover, the fact that Kiting's position was created by accident stimulating the Renqiao family's dislike and fear of the lower class cannot be ignored. Duo Song (Played by Zheng Xianjun) needs to undergo art therapy because when he stole a cake in the first grade of elementary school, he encountered Qin Shi by chance, and his spirit was stimulated and left psychologically traumatized. Duo Song mistakenly thought that the diligent man who walked up the steps was a ghost because he had never seen such a person before. Whether in kindergarten, school, or at home, Duo song, who grew up in a wealthy environment, faced the (bottom) class for the first time that day. (Seeing the painting of Do-song, Ji Woo thinks it's a chimpanzee, and Lian Jo thinks it's a self-portrait, but in fact, the person in the painting should be Qin shi.) It is no accident that Tasong was the first to recognize the smell of the Kiser house in Dong Yi's house. Dorsong is least familiar with the lower class, but is the first to identify the form or smell of the lower class.
The "bond of trust" between the upper classes and the lower classes does not exist
Due to the loss of basic manners of treating people, it is explained in the light of the specific situation that class aversion is the decisive reason for Dong Yi's killing. Conversely, the class wounds suffered by the upper classes are incurable, only worsened and repeated. Eating cake, Duo Song was traumatized by facing the terrible face of the lower class for the first time; in order to treat this psychological trauma, he witnessed the class face that caused the cake killing on the artificial stage again and fainted on the ground. This story gives all classes a sense of frustration.
Thus, the "bond of trust" between the upper classes and the lower classes does not exist. The real injustice in Parasite is communication. Dong Yijia even used walkie-talkies to achieve unimpeded communication; the Kizawa family, which rubbed the network, was in a communication dilemma because the wireless network was cut off. As Keizer said, to find a better wireless signal, you need to hold your phone high. Only by going to a higher place can you communicate smoothly. The Kiser family of four invaded Dong Yi's mansion one by one and fell into the illusion of achieving class rise along the gorgeous steps.
However, by ascending to find the wireless signal and successfully communicate, at best, it was only the toilet in the semi-basement washroom connected to the simple steps. In order to avoid the sewage flowing against the room, Ji Ting sat on the toilet lid of the toilet, which was closest to the ground, and took out the smoke hidden in the ceiling. The passage where Kiting smokes is the most bleak scene in the film.
The world seems to be full of courtesy and care, vitality and wisdom, but it is still in its original form after the Robert Altman-style natural and man-made disasters. On the second day of the rainstorm, Lian Qiao said to the guests who had been invited to her son's birthday party:
"After a heavy rain, the smog dissipated. If it doesn't rain, I really don't know what to do. "The heavy rain created the best gathering environment for them to live in high mansions, but it flowed infinitely to the lower places, bringing a fatal blow to the people at the bottom." The American-made tent in the courtyard was a temporary spiritual haven for Dozon, dripping rain; the cramped and cramped civilian house where many people dragged their tired bodies to sleep would suffer as soon as it rained. Dong Yi and Lian Qiao rarely spent a good night together on a rainy night, but the Kiser family couldn't sleep all night in the gym. The top floor obtains a clean environment through the erosion of rainwater, but the bottom layer is full of garbage because of this heavy rain.
Heavy rains rain fell from the sky like a disaster, and this setting is not unrelated to the previous comedic peeing plot. Reveling in a sense of accomplishment, the Kiser family, when eating meat and drinking wine in the semi-basement and Dongyi's mansion, either there are drunks peeing outside or rainstorms, and the basic composition of the two settings is consistent. Ji Woo sees the drunk man peeing and takes the landscape stone to solve it; later, he deals with Wen Guang, who visits in the rain, in the same way.
However, both responses failed, and the rain that could not be found lower ended up mixed with urine and poured by the toilet. The capable Kitting sat on the toilet, silently smoking in confusion; when the whole family found a job in turn and the family's situation gradually improved, the Keize family seemed to be temporarily energetic, but in fact, they were powerless from the beginning. The footage of the drunk man peeing has also appeared once before, but Kiser just looked out the window and smacked his tongue, and did not even intend to deal with it.
The way to convey sincerity and feelings is blocked, and the dilemma of survival that does not want to show people is conveyed
"Parasite" clearly constructs the position of the two families and the position of the characters through the setting of high and low and the direction of movement of rising and falling. The direction of the flow of water is consistent with the direction of communication, and the language is only unilaterally communicated from the upper level to the bottom. From preparing for a do-song birthday party to rushing to cook udon noodles with fried sauce, these are not just work instructions from employers to employees.
After Keese denounced Wen Guang, he defended himself: "It was not that I deliberately eavesdropped in the hospital, but that the content of the call reached my ears and was passively heard." This lie between the equivalent classes was subsequently transformed into a fact in the original relationship with the upper class. Kiser follows Lian Qiao to the supermarket to buy, and is forced to witness Lian Qiao's joy at the rain. Kiser hid under the living room table, and clearly heard Dong Yi's explicit mockery of the class smell on the sofa behind him. At this time, the spatial layout of the living room is consistent with the composition of the car where Dong Yi sits in the back seat and Kee ze sits in the front seat.
("Doesn't it look like the back seat of my car here?") Keese recalled that he had been ordered by Dong Yi to "look ahead" in the car because he was asking about the feelings of the husband and wife, and at this moment, he still could not turn to the place where the couple was talking while pestering, and could only listen passively unilaterally. On the other hand, Lian Qiao could not know how much the Kiser family had suffered due to last night's torrential rain, and Dong Yi would not understand how painful it was for Kiser to lose his basic etiquette.
Drivers should look straight ahead, not the back seat employer. Only employers can look each other in the eye. Qin Shi continued to send up Morse code signals, first with gratitude and later as a message for help. However, his signal was not successfully conveyed to the Dong Yi family. (Dozon tried to crack the signal, but quickly gave up.) The same is the video, Duo Hui quickly successfully transmitted upstairs, but Wen Guang could not send it out downstairs. The upper echelons cannot see the hearts of the lower layers, or there is no need to listen; the lower layers must see and listen even if they hate the hearts of the upper echelons. At the beginning of the film, the landlord who changed the wireless network password to cut off the network also lives upstairs.
What the bottom layer can convey is not your own heart, but the smell. The fact that the smell in the car is the opposite direction of the car's progress is a brief summary of the communication dilemma of the lower classes - the way of conveying sincerity and feelings is blocked, and the dilemma of survival that does not want to show people is conveyed.
When the extreme contradiction reaches its peak, it is no longer urine and rain that flows, but blood. The blood of Ji Ting and Qin Shi flowed downwards, wetting Dong Yi's courtyard. However, these noble bloods are regarded as dirty sewage. After Qin Shi was stabbed, the smell of blood mixed with the body odor of perennial seclusion underground was conveyed to Dong Yi.
Dong Yi did not hide his contempt on the ground, pinched his nose, and pulled the key from under the dying Qin Shi. He was unaware of how arrogant his behavior was. Kiser was critically injured and heard her daughter say to herself, "Daddy, don't press it, the more you press it, the more it hurts." In the end, Keizer chose not to suppress the anger and sadness in his heart, but to pass on this feeling to the upper class as it was, regardless of the smell. This form of communication is violent, tragic, and perhaps the most effective.
However, it should be noted here that Dong Yi despises not the smell of Keize but the smell of Qinshi, and it is Keize who stabbed Dongyi with a knife instead of Qinshi. If Kiser kills Dong Yi, who despises his own smell, it is that the humiliated Ki Ze kills Dong Yi, who lacks basic etiquette for people, which belongs to the individual-to-individual event.
However, instead of being Part of Kiser's family, the two had even fought fiercely before, but Kiser punished Dongyi with a knife for the contempt that Qinshi had suffered, and the murder was completely in the name of class. The only thing That Keetze can empathize with is the smell, because for him, this smell is class.
In fact, the smell of Keezer and Qinshi is not the same. However, the smell of survival of the lower classes conveyed by Keizer and the smell of death conveyed by Qin shi clearly form a class union here. Before that, the film focused only on portraying the class infighting between the Kiser family and the Qin family, and finally broke out into a fight with the upper class.
This class alliance, however, provoked only a very brief and rapid chemical reaction. Ji Ting left Dong Yi's mansion in the rainstorm and descended infinitely towards the semi-basement, worried about "what happened to those people underground just now", but it was only a pity, and the sense of guilt and class consciousness was not clear. Keizer made an extreme choice in the name of class, but soon panicked by his impulsive behavior and began to flee. Keese already knew where he was going. Qin Shi once hid in this underground space, or satisfied or helpless, the heart of the earth like ashes; now Keizer will also live here, with the passage of time or satisfied or helpless as the heart of the dead ash. Perhaps, the moment Kiser buried the breathless Wenguang in the courtyard, it was actually himself who was buried.
Towards the end of the story, Ki-woo also understands where he is going. After kissing in Doho's room on the second floor, he looked at the courtyard where the birthday party was held and asked, "Is this right place for me?" This sentence was his self-awakening, and he understood that what suited him was somewhere else. Then, Ji Woo picked up the landscape stone and went to where he should go. (Perhaps, he was there to reward Qin Shi and Wen Guang with an euthanasia.) ）
Ki-woo was once cowardly and began to imitate Min Hyuk's rear abilities. Ki-woo (not to replace Min Hyuk, but because of Min Hyuk's kindness) takes over the job of tutor and needs to show his abilities in front of Ren Jo, when he thinks of Min Hyuk and imitates his tone and says, "The momentum of the exam room is the most important.". (Earlier, when Min Hyuk reprimanded drunks who urinated on the ground, Ki Woo had heard Chung Sook praise him for "college students are just different.") Ji Woo forges the proof of study at The famous university where Min Hyuk works, takes over the tutoring job that Min Hyuk has done, falls in love with Do-hye, and imitates Min Hyuk's words and deeds, thinking that everything will be fine. However, Ki-woo is unable to become Min Hyuk after all. Perhaps, Min Hyuk will become the future Dong-yi, and Ki-woo will become Nam-il (Park Hae-il) in "The Monster of the Han River".
The orderly "plan" of the first half of "Parasite" is eventually swallowed up by the chaotic "no plan" of the second half. Ji Woo's plan seems to work very well, but it encounters a rainstorm, and after the appearance of the "unplanned" Wen Guang, it collapses in an instant. Ji Ting eagerly asks about the next plan, and Ji Woo stands on the outdoor steps in the rainstorm in a panic and ponders: If it is Min Hyuk, what will it do? However, Ki Woo can't become Min Hyuk and can't think of how Min Hyuk will handle it. (Min Hyuk is extremely wary of other college classmates, but happily transfers the task of tutoring Do-hui to Ki Woo because he feels that there is no need to guard against Ki Woo.) ）
Ki-woo plans to make a final attempt, but this decisive plan still ends in failure. Because when he walked down the steps of the basement with a tragic mood, he lost his hand and fell the landscape stone. This situation is the same as Nanichi in "Monsters of the Han River" who dropped a flame bottle at a critical moment, and in "Kidnapping the Dog at the Door", the man who was knocked down by the open door while violently chasing a prisoner in the aisle of his apartment. In Bong Joon-ho's films, this kind of "broken sound" of the lower class is not a mistake, it seems to be an inevitability. Perhaps, the plan can only be the way of life of the upper class.
Stills from "Monsters of the Han River"
Min Hyuk brought tutoring work, just like the landscape stone he gave. The landscape stone that is said to bring fortune and admission luck contains the dream of class ascension into a nightmare, and the seemingly lucky doom is finally revealed, hitting Ki-woo in the head. After experiencing this disaster, Ji Woo understood where he was going and walked down. On the contrary, after sinking, the landscape stone left the disproportionate semi-underground and returned to the clear valley of the high mountains.
Bong Joon-ho reminds us to rethink the contradictions of this world
The epilogue of Parasite consists of two letters. Kiser didn't know if Ki-woo had received the Morse code letter from him, and Ki-woo didn't know how the letter he had written was communicated to Ki-taek. The film begins with a missing contact with the outside world and ends with a rupture in communication within the family.
"Parasite" portrays a cruel tragedy, but the beginning and end of the film are very similar. A family of four from Germany lived in the mansion where the Dongyi family of four had lived. The underground hermit of the mansion that the owner was unaware of still existed, but it was replaced by a diligent man to a kiser. The first shot and the last shot of the film illustrate the similar situation of the same subject in the same way. Looking hard from the half-cut window into the semi-basement on the ground, the camera slowly rocks down from the horizon, and Ki-woo, embarrassed by the interruption of communication or communication, leans against the wall of the semi-basement.
In this way, the film announces the closure of all the doors of hope, revealing the fact that nothing has changed in the end, nor can it be changed. "Today, I have made a fundamental plan. Make a lot of money and buy that house. Father just had to walk up the steps. Please take care of your health and wait for that day to come. Kiyu's plan has only goals, no methods, and this "fundamental plan" is only a kind of "no plan" in the stubborn system of the class system.
In the first half of Parasite, the audience's emotions are substituted for the vulnerable Kidzer family, as if watching a prank movie, briskly enjoying the genre process of their successful implementation of the plan. After the turning point and entering the second half, the Kiser family begins to commit violence against the underground Wen Guang family in the middle of the ground, and the audience withdraws from the thrill of secret conspiracy and begins to feel confused. The audience's substitution object may be transformed into a more vulnerable Wenguang family in the second half of the film, but due to the otherization of Wenguang and Qinshi, this transformation is difficult to achieve. As the fights between the weak become more and more brutal, audiences can no longer enjoy the film from genre routines, but instead begin to think about the social significance of this confusing struggle composition.
Paradoxically, the film's most spectacular scene is the aerial shot of the low-lying civilian residential alley suffering from severe flooding after the Kiser family descends like hell, which can estimate the status of "Parasite". (If the most vivid image of political tragedy portrayed in 21st-century Korean movies is in the overhead shot of the corpse-strewn Miyai-dong vault in "Those People Then," the most vivid image of social tragedy is in this overhead shot of Parasite.) This work makes us either unhappy or angry, and we are bound to re-examine reality and the problems that reflect such reality at the end.
There is no "purification" in Bong Joon-ho's films. There is no hope, and if there is, it is not a torch, but a fire. (To preserve that tinder, you have to constantly blow inward from the outside of the film.) After seeing the excellent works he directed, the real reason for feeling powerless was not the result of the struggle, but the composition. Bong Joon-ho is a skeptic who reminds us to rethink the contradictions of the world from the ruins of zero that dominate this sense of powerlessness.
Excerpt from | Xu Yuedong
Edited | Shi Yanping
Introduction Proofreading | Wang Xin
Source: Beijing News