Six-time Oscar nominee 'Parasite' now yours to own
New in Home Entertainment: The dark comedy thriller 'Parasite' follows members of a Korean family struggling to make ends meet as they scheme their way into the lives of a wealthy family.
The 92nd annual Academy Awards wrapped with “Parasite” taking home the big win for best picture. The film from South Korea won a total of four Oscars, and made history as the first non-English language film to take home best picture.
The movie, on its surface, is a dark comic thriller about family, class and capitalism.
The film highlights South Korea’s emergence as a global cultural power, a reflection of decades of focus on building world-class industries in one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia.
INCOME INEQUALITY
But, the film’s main characters portray South Koreans who have been left behind by the country’s dramatic changes. It’s a biting commentary on deepening inequality and other problems that have many young and poor people describing their lives as a hellish nightmare.
South Korea has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor among developed nations and is struggling mightily to deal with decaying job markets, rocketing house prices and a record-low birth rate as couples put off having babies while struggling with low pay and harsh work conditions.
The film hinted at an uncomfortable truth: While the national successes have been spectacular — from Samsung’s rise as a global economic powerhouse to the explosion of K-pop in Asia and beyond — many South Koreans recognized that there’s been a dark side to that rise.
BACKLASHES AND BLACKLISTS
Only a few years ago, Bong Joon Ho, the film’s auteur who won big Sunday night at the Oscars, was blacklisted by the government, and the characters in his film reflect a society where many feel intense hopelessness.
South Korea’s rapid emergence from the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War also saw a bloody transition from dictatorship to democracy. Its association with neat smartphones and cars came amid a constant threat from nuclear North Korea. For every international success, there’s also widespread worry that South Korea will forever be overshadowed by regional giants Russia, China and Japan.
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Although fully Korean in language, humor and tone, Bong’s dark tale of poverty and class struggle resonated across borders because Western democracies also have been experiencing similar social and economic problems, albeit not as “extreme” as in South Korea, according to Chin Jung-kwon, a prominent cultural critic.
“The film shows that South Korea still has a strong message to show the world,” Chin said.
ART OF SUBSTANCE
Art of merit and depth creates political consequences for the country’s artists.
Bong was one of thousands of artists who were blacklisted and denied government funds under the rule of conservative former President Park Geun-hye for their allegedly critical views of her administration. Following protests by millions, Park was ousted from office in March 2017 and is now serving a decades-long prison term for corruption.
Not everyone was happy about how Bong portrayed the characters in “Parasite,” which tells the story of how an unemployed family of four living in a slum basement apartment comically conned its way into the lives of one of Seoul’s wealthiest families, obsessed with empty, shallow Western bourgeois consumerism, before things started to unravel darkly.
“Every society in the world experiences conflicts created by people’s efforts to move up the class ladder, and South Korean films have dealt with this issue for a long time,” veteran filmmaker Lee Jang-ho said. “Maybe Bong’s dark humor and his vivid description of the lives of the South Korean poor, including their ‘half-basement’ living spaces, felt refreshing to American moviegoers.”
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Critic Kim Gyu-hang, however, accused Bong of objectifying poor people and treating their lives like a “sightseeing attraction,” saying that the film makes no real attempt at explaining how the system, politically and financially, locked the characters in a desperately hopeless situation.
“(“Parasite”) provides no deep insight into humans, their anger and how they are a byproduct of the social system that surrounds them,” Kim said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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