Movie Review: Parasite (it's about time I watched it!)

I watched Parasite last night. A few random thoughts about it:

 

First, for almost a year, I thought it was another Contagion film, how wrong I was. When I heard the convo around class and privilege I figured it would relate to who got vaccines, etc. I was wrong.

 

Second, no matter how many times I watch a foreign film, it's so interesting to end it and think "I just read a script with an unfamiliar language and contextual images".

 

Third, this film got a TON of love when it came out, so maybe I had high expectations. Sometimes I think certain relatively artsy pieces come out and they get this weird momentum and there's almost this pressure to say it's great.

 

Here's my review of it:

 

About 75% of the movie was really good to outstanding. The difference between the reality of the main family in poverty and what they were received in the wealthy family they met was interesting.

 

Most interesting was how the rich family was so willing to latch on to certain things as ways out of their plastic existence, even though most of it was false. It reminded me that when in confusion or desperation, I will at times grab a hold of something that lacks real evidence because it feels like a way out.

 

(And oddly I sometimes reject things that have TONS of evidence of a way out!)

 

There's one substantial plot twist that to me was unnecessary. I'm guessing there's validity to the situation and I thought it added little to the movie other than a crutch for action that I thought could have been resolved some other way.

 

Maybe it was a way to just be outlandish which is fine but what I loved so much about the movie up to that point was that it was all grounded in possibility, even when it was outlandish.

 

Finally the 25% that was ok to lame could have, in my mind, been completely cut from the movie.

 

A few of the actors/actresses were spectacular. The sister of the poor family and the mom/dad of the rich family were incredible. The rest of the cast was good and really good at times.

 

Finally, I decided to look at what else was nominated to see if it really deserved the Oscar for Best Picture.

 

The ones that I saw (JoJo Rabbit (very good), Once upon a time in Hollywood (meh), The Irishman (yawn), Joker (spectacular for 50% of it), Ford vs Ferrari (really fun but not awesome)) mostly didn't quite match up.

 

The only one that I saw that I thought was better was Little Women. I thought that movie was delightful and fresh (as I saw the last version too).

 

Overall, I did not come away from the movie thinking it was Best Picture worthy and it was worth the watch because the story for most of it was really interesting.

 

Another movie I saw called Burning was a way more controversial take on what I thought was essentially the same subject matter.

Comments

[Chris Yeh]

I think the plot twist (which I won't reveal because you didn't either) is essential to demonstrate that simply being poor doesn't mean that you have some kind of moral superiority. Whatever your wealth and background, if you make selfish choices to harm others to improve your own situation, you are behaving badly.

[Tim Taylor]

I do like the Karmic aspect of the payback part to it. I just didn't much care for the vehicle. I thought that movie was fantastic even without it.

It made it kind of outlandish. Then again I look at certain art and have zero idea of what it actually means or even means to say!