History was made at the 92nd Academy Awards when Parasite became the first foreign language film to win the Best Motion Picture. While it was a popular choice, in truth, nobody expected it to actually win. But just how remarkable was Parasite’s victory, and did it deserve to pick up the famous statue that reminded Academy executive secretary, Margaret Herrick, of her Uncle Oscar?
What is Parasite about?
For those who haven’t seen it, and you really, really should, Parasite is a social satire about two families in modern day Seoul. One family, the Kims, live in a squalid, semi-basement apartment, scraping a living folding pizza boxes. The other family, the Parks, live high up in the suburbs, enjoying a luxury life in a beautiful mansion behind high walls. When one of the Kims falls into a teaching job with the Parks, he opens the floodgates for his entire family to scheme their way into the Park household in various roles.
So far, so comedic, and the first hour is certainly lots of fun, as the irrepressible Kims charm and cheat their way into jobs ranging from housekeeper to ‘art therapist’ at the expense of the rich but naïve Park family. In fact, things go so well that you can’t help but wonder what is going to go wrong. But even if you are thinking this, you’ll still not be prepared for what comes next, as the film lurches from comedy to thriller to horror and back again so fast that you are left clinging to the armrests of your cinema seat.
Parasite is clever, funny, shocking and grim all at the same time and, like all good thrillers, you never quite know which direction it will suddenly twist into next. To say much more would be to spoil the film, but suffice to say, if you spend the first hour thinking “this is fun but it’s no Oscar winner”, then just wait. All will be revealed in time.
What makes parasite so good?
The very best movies are the ones that leave you with more questions than answers, and Parasite will stay with you and keep you puzzling for a long time after the titles have rolled. The biggest question of all, of course, is exactly who is the parasite of the title? Is it the poor Kim family, infiltrating their way into the rich home, exploiting their trust and taking their money? Or is it the rich Parks, who seem so incompetent at everyday living that they need to exploit the lower classes to make their privileged lives possible? Or is the parasite something else entirely, which appears from left-field midway through the film?
The social satire is certainly writ large, from the geography of their homes, proudly high and pitifully low, to their take on life. When there is a major storm the Kims’ semi-basement home is flooded with raw sewage, while the Parks’ only comment on how glad they are that the storm has cleared the air pollution. These are families who are poles apart, yet live in the same city, within walking distance of each other.
One of the smartest things about Parasite is that there are no clear good guys and bad guys. The Kims are dishonest cheats who are lying their way into work, yet they are only doing so to feed themselves and they are only cheating their way into servant roles. On the other hand, the Parks are apparently nice people, yet they constantly put their staff firmly in their place and hold some unpleasantly condescending views about their lifestyle and even their smell. Who you side with, if anyone, is up to you, and you find your loyalties shifting back and forth as the film progresses.
Was it expected to win at the Oscars?
Parasite’s win at the Oscars was a big shock for many. In the end, it collected four statuettes, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director for Bong Joon Ho and Best International Film, yet it was never the favorite. With Parasite trailing 1917 significantly in the betting, and Bong Joon Ho trailing Sam Mendes by even more, it wasn’t exactly an outsider, but it was the still kind of wager you would feel safer using a free bet offer on rather than risking your own cash. Parasite was as much as 4/1, while 1917 was leading the betting as short as 4/7.
With so many of the awards nailed on, such as Joaquim Phoenix for best actor and Rene Zellweger for best actress, Parasite’s win was by far the biggest surprise of the night. 1917, on the other hand, went away with just three technical awards from its ten nominations.
Could we see it coming?
Apart from the fact that Parasite is a damn fine film, as its 99% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes shows, there were other pointers that perhaps makes its win less of a surprise. The Academy likes films with a conscience, with recent wins for Green Book, Moonlight, Spotlight and Twelve Years a Slave good examples of so-called message movies. They are also growing fonder of foreign language films, with Alfonso Cuaron’s autobiographical Roma one of the front runners for best film just last year.
At the same time, the voters may be growing tired of war films, especially trench-set epics. With the remarkable documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old and the poignant Journey’s End fresh in the memory, 1917 didn’t really have anything new to say, beyond its gimmicky one-take styling. Add in a certain anti-Netflix bias against Marriage Story and The Irishman, and a squeamishness against the violence of Joker and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the field was perhaps clearer than it looked for Parasite to spring a surprise.
What does this mean for the future?
Parasite may go down in history as the film that broke down what director, Bong, describes as the ‘one-inch barrier’; the subtitles that stop people from enjoying a world of films beyond the accepted Hollywood English. It has already taken $246m worldwide and is the top UK foreign film of all time, taking over £11.5m ($15m) and even out-performing Birds of Prey. However, only time will tell whether Parasite will help infest our cinemas with great foreign films, or whether it will be exterminated like the stink bugs in the Kims’ apartment by a summer of big studio blockbusters.
