I have not seen it but this really piques my curiosity.
Posted on 06/25/2020 5:04:04 PM PDT by Rummyfan
I am late to this but Parasite, now available on streaming services, is the most willfully misinterpreted movie that I have ever seen. The conventional interpretation is so obviously wrong that I cannot but think that it is anything but a collective gaslighting. The conventional interpretation is that the film is about inequality and on the surface that makes sense. After all, there is a rich family and a poor family, and an upstairs and a downstairs, and everyone knows that inequality is the problem of our age so despite the subtitles this Korean film must be a version of what we expect to see. Hence, Manohla Dargis writing at the New York Times says “The story takes place in South Korea but could easily unfold in Los Angeles or London.” True but not in the way she imagines! Rather than a conventional discourse on “inequality,” Parasite is deeply, shockingly, politically incorrect, even subversive. Mild spoilers.
The Dargis review is spectacularly, hilariously wrong from the very first sentence “a destitute man voices empathy for a family that has shown him none. “They’re rich but still nice,” he says, aglow with good will.” The man is not destitute (his entire family has been raking in the cash by this point), the family has shown him nothing but generosity and respect, and he is not aglow with good will. But what do you expect from a newspaper that rates Parasite an R for “class exploitation”! The Times is leading the cultural revolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at marginalrevolution.com ...
I have not seen it but this really piques my curiosity.
Not to be negative but Parasite is a very typical Korean movie. Lots of stress, conflict and an untranslatable trait Koreans call “han.”
I, surprisingly, liked it. I’m guessing you would, too, RF.
Still better than anything Hollywood put out.
I liked Train to Busan.
War of the Arrows, alternately titled Arrow: The Ultimate Weapon, is a good Korean film.
I read the whole review at the link.
Very interesting. A much different take on the Oscar winner than anything else I have read.
I normally don’t pay any attention to the Oscars, but I had a horse in the race this year with “1917.”
Quite disappointed over that. But there may be more to this South Korean film than I thought. Maybe our public library will get the DVD soon ...
The zombie carpet was da bomb :-))
The point of the movie is actually expressed by several of the characters in a few scenes. The main character begins his “ascent” into the life of the upper classes when he meets a school mate who sets him up as an English tutor. He also gives him a mysterious “philosopher’s stone” that he carries with him throughout the movie going up the hill to the rich people’s house and then falling back with the stone into his sewer connected apartment when their scheme is almost exposed and a powerful storm flushes he and his family down the hill.
The story is a nihilistic metaphor based on the myth of Sisyphus. If you are born in the “wrong” class all your struggles are pointless because no matter how you may try to get ahead you will always fall back down the hill. The rich class are completely undeserving of their success and have no understanding or appreciation of the humans that live at the other end of the spectrum. Its basic Marxism without the “dictatorship of the proletariat” part at the end.
It’s good :)
It should be streaming on Netflix or someplace. I recommend.
Very interesting. I want to see this.
One review I read claimed it was all about Global Warming, i.e. the last scene with the rainstorm that delighted the rich people but destroyed the poor family’s home showed how rich people are privileged over poor people wrt weather.
The review put me in mind of a Korean proverb “We don’t avoid stepping in poop because it’s scary, we avoid it because it’s dirty”.
I think this movie is illustrating that proverb.
I started to hate the movie after I read a few reviews by Marxists, but I'm starting to remember how much better this movie was than most of the dreck out there and might watch it again.
I am not a fan of movies that I have to read but having said that I really did enjoy this movie.
Frankly I fought its message was like the Jack In the Beanstalk message don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Looked at some reviews on Netflix. Added this to my queue. We’ll see.
Thanks for this. Now I’m absolutely going to see it.
The main reason I saw The Deer Hunter was because Jane Fonda called it Pentagon propaganda. Likewise, I’ll check out Parasite, thanks to it being trashed by a writer from the Slimes.
Still better than anything Hollywood put out.
Agree totally. And some American movies and TV shows are just ripoffs of Korean originals. For example, “San Andreas” stole whole sections from “Haeundae”; the TV show “The Good Doctor” is a ripoff of the Korean drama by the same name.
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