Parasite:

 I think twice before watching a foreign film with subtitles as somehow the translation never captures the true essence of original dialogue. But if it’s the first foreign language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and for Best International Feature Film then it had to be seen, if only to decipher how the Academy could break free of its strong American/Hollywood/Caucasian biases. Parasite also took the awards for Best Screenplay and Best Director, for Bong Joon-ho, so I knew there was something unusual going on and I must watch it!

Parasite is a South Korean film by their acclaimed Director Bong Joon Ho. As a genre one would find it difficult to classify it, but it has elements of a dark comedy, thriller and social commentary rolled into one. It’s a story of class-conflict, the typical haves vs have nots and how the two lead their separate existences, with never a chance of stepping on to each other’s well demarcated turfs. But that is precisely what happens.

A family of four -Kims- lives in relative poverty & squalor, with grown up kids dropping-out of college and parents only barely employed, making Pizza boxes and struggling to obtain full wages from the quality control freaks. They steal wifi time from unsuspecting neighbours, till password barriers are drawn. On the other side of the class divide is the Park family ( also 4 members) who live in a resplendent house in a very up-market area, with housekeepers and chauffeurs! Very quickly the family of Kim cons its way, one by one, into the household of the Parks through one act of referral deceit and subterfuge over another, even as the Parks remain oblivious to the fact that their new retinue of helps and tutors are in fact related to each other. Up unto this moment the parasites create comedy and humour, but soon it turns out to be a thriller, with the emergence of two more parasites! If I reveal more of the plot, the incentive to watch the movie will disappear.

Suffice it to say that the plot takes several twists and turns and a series of events happen that bring you to the edge of your seat, causing uneasiness as you hold your breath in bewilderment, not quite understanding what the sequence is going to lead to but apprehensive that nothing good can come out of this. The night of the flood spells and extenuates the socio-economic contradictions in the lives of the two families, where the Kims’ house is flooded with gooey sewerage and they have to wade through horrible, stinking sludge to find shelter in a community relief camp while the Parks rejoice in the beautiful rain, unmindful of and apathetic towards the difficulties faced by those less fortunate than themselves.

While the film is set in modern day South Korea, it is almost universal in its treatment of socio-economic disparities between the privileged and working classes. Infact the flood scene might very well have been from Mumbai or Delhi, with similar developments and class responses. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is when the son asks the father: papa whats your plan? Papa replies, very stoically, “the plan is that I have no plan! If I have a plan and it fails, then I have a setback but if I have no plan, then I suffer no setbacks!” Perhaps that’s how one should be……… and of course you are left wondering exactly who is the parasite here or is there more than one parasite? Is everyone a Parasite? In the end it’s  brilliant story telling, with the craftiness of theatre, replete with sound, light, morse codes, stairs going up and down, ghosts, red-indians and all other ingredients that call for a thrilling experience. I would call it one of the best movies I have ever seen, despite some lose ends. Go watch it while its on! Dont wait for Netflix or Amazon Prime!