Jello Biafra said that a number of years ago. He was right then, and he’s right now. As the lead singer of the legendary band Dead Kennedys, Biafra has spent decades seriously thinking about how we relate to politics and each other. Seriously…yet not so seriously. Hell, the name of the band itself is meant to be a dark joke about the end of the American dream, and the band became immortal due to its powerful use of biting satire
Biafra and his bandmates knew that satire has very real power, and it doesn’t simply have to come from a place of bitterness or cruelty.* From Aristophanes to Voltaire, Jonathan Swift to Joe Queenan, the best satirists butcher society’s sacred cows. For example, consider the American myth. It’s based on a concept so simple, people actually believe it to be true—class doesn’t exist here: we’re taught that with enough hard work and ingenuity, anyone can break free from poverty. The idea is, of course, laughable.**
Wherever people exist, class exists. Wherever class exists, some people will thrive off the labor of others. But which people, and which labor? That’s the question asked by Bong Joon-ho, one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, in his new movie Parasite.
The family ekes out a living folding pizza for a pizza joint, and they quietly steal Wi-Fi from the coffee place next door. Their lives suck, and it seems unlikely to change, until it does. Ki-taek’s son Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) has an opportunity dropped in his lap. One of his buddies is planning to study abroad and he has a gig as an English tutor. Would Ki-woo be interested in taking over as a tutor?
Hell, yes, he would be! It turns out his student is Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), a teenaged girl living in an extremely nice house. Her father Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) runs a successful IT business, and her mother Choi Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a homemaker who hires other people to handle all the homemaking duties. Her little brother is Park Da-song (Jung Hyun-joon), a precocious boy who may or may not legitimately have a need for art therapy.
Ki-woo sees an opening, a way to get his family out of poverty. The scam begins with him innocently suggesting that the Park family might benefit from the services of an art therapist. His sister Kim Ki-jeong (Park So-dam) is more than happy to pose as said therapist. Next, the Kims get the previous housekeeper fired. Ki-jeong “just happens” to know a perfect replacement, played by their matriarch Kim Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin). After additional manipulations unfold, Ki-taek becomes the new driver for the Park clan and two families live under one roof.
From there? My God, things happen.
That’s not entirely surprising if you’re familiar with the work of Bong Joon-ho.*** He’s a South Korean director known for spinning wildly original stories out of fairly pedestrian concepts. With Parasite, Bong has made an absurdly entertaining film that hopscotches between genres effortlessly. It’s a comedy of manners, a thriller, a horror movie, and a jet-black satire about the failure of the haves and the have-nots to cohabitate. His film is made with supreme confidence, and everything from the assured editing to the visual contrasts between the cavernous Park home and the claustrophobic Kim home is a marvel.
Bong also wrote the screenplay with co-writer Han Jin-won, and it’s the kind of script that causes intense envy in other writers. They have something to say about the desperation of the poor, about the wealthy surviving on the backs of the underclasses, about the wealth gap that only gets wider. Lesser filmmakers would get preachy, yet Bong and Han keep the narrative moving along with energy and a weird kind of joy.
Good satire makes you laugh. Great satire makes you think. There’s not a doubt in my mind that Parasite is one of the best films of 2019, if not the best film of the year. It’s the kind of movie that’s made with a staggering degree of skill, is highly entertaining, and is guaranteed to start a memorable conversation.
*That’s why Republicans are so bad at it.
**I had a neighbor who genuinely believed that Donald Trump was born into poverty and worked his way up from nothing. Bless his heart.
***If you’re not, no worries! Snowpiercer and Okja are both streaming on Netflix now, and they’re an excellent entry point into Bong’s filmography.