The first film Bong Joon-ho has made in 10 years that’s set entirely in his native South Korea, Parasite finds the eccentric, genre-driven auteur scaling back the high-concept ambitions of his prior two films, the post-apocalyptic Snowpiercer and the globe-trotting ecological fable Okja, in favor of examining a close-knit family dynamic that’s reminiscent of the one at the center of The Host, Bong’s 2007 breakout monster flick. Except this time the monster isn’t some amphibious abomination that results from extreme genetic mutation, but the insidious forces of class and capital that divide a society’s people.
In a cramped apartment, a family of four are sent into a panic when the WiFi network they’ve been pirating goes offline. Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and her brother, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), scurry about as their father, Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), instructs them to try holding their phones up to the ceiling, and to stand in every nook and cranny of their home until they find a new connection. All the while, Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) bemoans her husband’s laziness and prods him to find work. But it’s Ki-woo who pulls his family out of their impoverished life, when he gets an opportunity to tutor Da-hye (Jung Ziso), daughter of the rich Park family.
Parasite essentially puts an absurdist spin on both the concept behind Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sentimental Shoplifters from last year and the bitter class commentary that underpins Nagisa Oshima’s 1969 film Boy. Bong positions Ki-taek and his family as grifters so adept at pulling off cons as a unit that they successfully convince the Parks to bring them all into their employ, in one capacity or another. Ki-jung becomes an “arts therapy” teacher for the Park clan’s precocious young son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun), and, later, the rich family’s driver and nanny are pushed out of their jobs through elaborate scandals manufactured by the poor family, in order to install Ki-taek and Moon-gwang, respectively, into those roles.
Bong pulls off a neat trick by insinuating that the parasite of his film’s title must be Ki-taek’s family; after all, they certainly live off the “host” to which they’ve attached themselves. But in typical fashion, Bong starts to lace Parasite with all sorts of complications that begin to challenge the audience’s perceptions—left turns and big reveals that not only bring new layers to the film’s social commentary, but also develop the characters and their attendant psychologies, which encompass the psychic toll of shame, lack of empathy, and deception.
The twists in this narrative also activate some of Bong’s more inspired and sociopolitically loaded visual ideas. At one point in the film, the slum village where Ki-taek and his family live is devastated by a massive flood during a night of severe weather. Meanwhile, in the upper-class neighborhood where the Park clan lives, a backyard camping trip is ruined by rain. The particular layout of one unexpected setting, which sees members of the lower class literally occupying a space below the rich, doubles as an ingenious metaphor for class subjugation. Remarkably, Bong even finds room for a commentary on Korean peninsula relations.
The only thing that keeps Parasite just slightly below the tier of Bong’s best work, namely The Host and his underrated and similarly themed 2000 debut film, Barking Dogs Never Bite, is the overstuffed pile-up of incident that occurs toward the end. This is frequently an issue for Bong’s films (both Snowpiercer and Okja climax with busy and disorientating action set pieces that lose sight of their characters in the process), and here it manifests in a boldly gruesome scene of violence that’s undercut by a lengthy and rather contrived denouement.
Ultimately, Bong’s excoriating indictment of South Korea’s dehumanizing social culture isn’t far removed from that of Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, but he mounts it with a dazzling control of genre conventions that he continues to seamlessly bend to his absurd comic rhythms. Parasite also reinstates the emotional core that’s been missing from Bong’s recent work, and even feigns a concise narrative structure. It’s the kind of bold and uncompromising work that confirms why Bong is one of our most exciting auteurs, for how his sociocultural criticisms can be so biting, so pungent, when they’re imbued with such great focus and sense of intent.
Image/Sound
The transfer on this Criterion edition remains faithful to Parasite’s theatrical exhibition, boasting sharp detail and vibrant color; the subtle visual and textural delights nestled within Bong Joon-ho’s stark compositions are perfectly preserved throughout. A second disc includes the film’s black-and-white version, but not unlike the similar retooling that Mad Max: Fury Road received, color is such a spectacularly rendered, carefully considered element of the original cut that this version feels superfluous. The soundtrack on both cuts is as enveloping as the film’s visual schema, calling particular attention to the retro sci-fi aspects of Jung Jae-il’s eerie, theremin-filled score while keeping dialogue and ambient effects clear in the mix.
Extras
With the film already available on 4K, the appeal of this Blu-ray release comes down to its extras, and on that front it certainly delivers. For one, the commentary track announces itself as a deep dive right of the gate, with Bong and critic Tony Rayns swiftly tying elements of Parasite to the director’s prior films and explaining the symbolism buried in minutiae of characterization and design. Interviews are included with crew members, including editor Yang Jinmo and cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, who notes how he crafted the film’s look by making wide-angle lenses that didn’t distort the dimensions of the image. Bong himself has a lively discussion with critic Darcy Paquet, who changes things up for the press campaign-beleaguered director by using free-associative prompts to let him dictate the flow of the conversation. Bong and fellow South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook discuss the legacy of the New Korean Cinema movement, while footage from Parasite’s Cannes premiere and a Master Class lecture with Bong are also included. Storyboard comparisons with the final film demonstrate the director’s carefully mapped planning, and a booklet essay by critic Inkoo Kang that unpacks the film as the culmination of its maker’s career.
Overall
Bong Joon-ho’s historic international breakthrough receives a superlative Blu-ray package, though it inadvertently calls attention to Criterion’s slowness in pivoting to UHD.
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