Parasite
This review is a part of the Best Picture Project: a review of every single Academy Award winner for the Best Picture category. Parasite is the ninety second Best Picture winner at the 2019 Academy Awards.
The last time a Palme d’Or winner won Best Picture was all the way back in 1955, with Marty. Before that, was The Lost Weekend. Both American works. All of the world features (and even American films) since never really stood a chance. The Academy tends to wind its nose upward towards the idea of these elite festival darlings taking home the top prize; although these winners can end up in a few categories, say Best International Feature Film. Well, that all changed at the ninety second Academy Awards. Bong Joon-ho’s class based darkly-comedic thriller Parasite won Best Picture. Times have changed, haven’t they? Well, that would have been enough if that was where this story ended. Nope. Parasite, in ninety two years, is the first non-English-speaking film to ever win Best Picture. The spell has been broken. The Academy can truly celebrate international works.
The ceremony started with a bit of a twist. Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won won Oscars for their original screenplay. It’s rare, but it can happen. Pedro Almodóvar won for Talk to Her’s screenplay, for instance. The idea of foreign films winning for their writing is usually unrewarded, but it has (barely) happened in the past. So, Parasite winning here was great, but I was unconvinced that the Academy was willing to change its ways. The safer options forever win. While 1917 was tremendous, it would be nice if the actual best film of the year won, and an international work could put the Academy in the right direction (after those disastrous five steps backwards with Green Book). Then, Parasite won Best International Feature Film, as expected. It was when Bong Joon-ho won for Best Director that everything changed for me. Wait… Sam Mendes is out? Really? Parasite is sweeping up the major awards that Best Picture winners usually get? Say it isn’t so. Could… could this happen?
Father Ki-taek gazing at the rock meant to grant fortune.
Not since Moonlight have I been so proud to be wrong with my Best Picture prediction. Parasite has ushered in a potential new age for the Academy. We shouldn’t think twice about counting out the works of the world anymore. Out of all the years I picked to share all of the Best Picture winners with the world, day by day, I’m glad it was 2019 and 2020, where the newest entry was this masterpiece. After the hours upon hours of work that went into describing every winner in existence, it feels almost like fate that this first winner, since I finished all of my articles, is ground breaking.
So, what made Parasite resonate with the Academy? Well, it is firstly a brilliant, blistering film. The first half is a savagely funny satire, that takes shots at the poor class, the rich elite, and all in between. We become judgmental, laughing at a removed member of society thinking that a child’s self portrait is a drawing of a monkey; we laugh even harder at the wealthy mother that considers said child to be an artistic genius. For nearly an hour, we are spellbound by Joon-ho’s mesmerizing writing, where the destitute Kim family aims for a better life within the Park household. If we’re not rolling over at hysterical moments, we’re speechless with the winding of the plot. How can this predicament get even more hectic? The deeper down the rabbit hole we go, the more the Kim family presses their luck. They have brief signs of success, but they crave more. Every family member needs their own piece of the pie. They must assimilate into the Park home.
The Kim children trying to get reception in their cramped, unhygienically designed home.
Then, the turning point happens (yes, that moment), and Parasite is all downhill from there. From us poking fun at everyone’s financial situations (great or terrible), we head straight towards the guilt brought upon the blame game. The Kim family got greedy, because they need all that they can get to survive. The Park family is ignorant, but they’re relatively humble and mean well. Now that Parasite has delved into Hitchcockian territory, anyone is expendable, and you may feel legitimately terrible for being the onlooker gawking at all of this. Now, it’s too late. Everything is dark. The story has taken a drastically unpredictable turn. Nothing is sacred.
Parasite is now a game of survival. The scrambling to safety is where things get even more insteresting. The image of cockroaches is brought up earlier in the film, and it relates (sadly) heavily to the Kim family meaning just to keep going in an unforgiving world. They are likened to pests. It’s a depressing reality that is driven even deeper home once their own house is flooding with literal excrement; society will never allow them to be anything more than they have been forced to be. All of this builds towards a climax that could go any possible way, and an ending hell bent on a dream that snags any suffering dreamer (even you) until your optimism is crushed one final time.
The Park parents discussing a delicate matter.
In 2020, the world may be divided, but many of us can identify with economic struggles (even the middle class). If you’re not fortunate beyond reasonable means, you’re privy to financial struggles of some degree. Joon-ho speaks for entire civilizations, even though his initial starting point was to replicate the state of South Korea’s class separation that is still ongoing. He draws you in with an intriguing premise, gets you to stick around with some good old fashioned mockery, and then you’re glued to the screen, facing the darkest moments in the lives of those that have nothing left to lose. The damnation of poverty cannot go away if the one percent don’t allow the rest of society to gasp for air when needed. Parasite knows this. Thankfully, the Park family are actual human beings here, and not greedy monsters.
The genre bending in Parasite is so damn good, it’s borderline unnoticeable. I have to really think about it, and decide it’s part black comedy, part thriller, part horror, part melodrama. It exists in its own realm. It stands out far too much for film lovers and industry members to not notice, hence its multiple Academy Awards nominations. It’s perfect, so that luckily means it was impossible to ignore once noticed. Whether it’s a singular film experience, a flawless narrative, an amalgamation of emotions, or a booming and complex statement, Parasite was deserving of its win. It managed to be crowned. It has been an hour since the award that I am writing this review, and I still can’t believe it has happened.
A party is tossed together for Park Da-song, and both the Kim and Park families are meshing together more than ever.
Knowing what I know about the Academy Awards, this success can be leapt away from at any instance. The Academy can finally make a major, much-needed move, and then resort back to its safe ways in due time. Well, for now, I am relishing in the three hundred and sixty six days (yay leap years) that Parasite is the currently crowned Best Picture winner. In a year when the lack of diversity in the acting categories was greatly noticeable, a slice of world cinema took home three major awards. Never has a foreign film been so successful at the Oscars. It took a hard reality check of the world’s illogical financial set up, and the opus of one of our generation’s most gifted filmmakers, for the Academy to change. Even if it’s just for a year. Neglecting masterpieces for films that can sell well is a tired modus operandi, and Parasite changing history is a moment I can get behind.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.