Parasite
Parasite (Korean: 기생충; RR: Gisaengchung) is a 2019 South Korean black comedy thriller film directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Han Jin-won. It stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, and Lee Jung-eun and follows the members of a poor family who scheme to become employed by a wealthy family by infiltrating their household and posing as unrelated, highly qualified individuals.
Parasite premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on 21 May 2019, where it became the first South Korean film to win the Palme d'Or. It was then released in South Korea by CJ Entertainment on 30 May 2019.
The film received widespread critical acclaim, with praise directed towards its screenplay, Bong's direction, acting, social commentary, cinematography, editing and production values, and has featured in multiple listings of the best films of the 2010s and is considered one of the best South Korean films of all time. It has grossed over $266.9 million worldwide on a production budget of about $11 million, becoming the highest-grossing South Korean film.
Among its numerous accolades, Parasite won a leading four awards at the 92nd Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. It became the first South Korean film to receive Academy Award recognition, as well as the first film not in English to win Best Picture.[note 1] It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and became the first film not in English to win the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Plot
The Kim family – father Ki-taek, mother Chung-sook, daughter Ki-jung and son Ki-woo – live in a small semi-basement apartment (banjiha),[10] have low-paying temporary jobs as pizza box folders, and struggle to make ends meet.[11] University student Min-hyuk, a friend of Ki-woo's, gives the family a scholar's rock meant to promise wealth. Leaving to study abroad, he suggests that Ki-woo take over his job as an English tutor for the wealthy Park family. Ki-woo poses as a university student and is hired; Mrs Park decides they will call him "Kevin".
The Kim family infiltrates the lives of the Parks by recommending each other's services, posing as unrelated and highly qualified workers. Ki-woo tutors and begins a romance with the Parks' daughter, Da-hye. Ki-jung poses as "Jessica", an art therapist to the Parks' young son, Da-song. Ki-jung frames Mr Park's chauffeur as having had sex in the car, and Ki-taek is hired to replace him. Finally, Chung-sook takes over as the Parks' housekeeper after the Kims exploit the severe peach allergy of the long-time housekeeper, Moon-gwang, and convince Mrs Park that she has tuberculosis.
When the Parks leave on a camping trip, the Kims revel in the luxuries of the Park residence. Moon-gwang returns, telling Chung-sook she has left something in the house's basement, and reveals the hidden entrance to an underground bunker created by the house's architect and previous owner. Moon-gwang's husband, Geun-sae, has been secretly living underneath the home for years, hiding from loan sharks. Chung-sook refuses Moon-gwang's pleas to help Geun-sae remain in the bunker, but Moon-gwang discovers the truth about the Kim family and gains the upper hand.
A severe rainstorm brings the Parks home early, and the Kims scramble to clean up the home, while a brawl breaks out between Moon-gwang, Geun-sae, and the Kims. The Kims trap Geun-sae and a mortally wounded Moon-gwang in the bunker, and Ki-taek sees Geun-sae sending a fruitless message in Morse code using the home's lights. Mrs Park reveals to Chung-sook that Da-song had a seizure-inducing traumatic experience years ago when he saw a "ghost" – actually Geun-sae emerging from the basement. The Kims escape the Parks' house unseen, but not before hearing Mr Park comment that Ki-taek, despite being a good employee, smells bad. Returning home to find their apartment completely flooded by the storm, the Kims are forced to sleep in a gymnasium with other displaced people.
The next day, Mrs Park hosts a house party for Da-song's birthday, with the Kim family in attendance. Ki-woo enters the bunker with the scholar's rock to face Geun-sae. Finding Moon-gwang dead, he is attacked by Geun-sae, who bludgeons him with the rock and escapes. Seeking to avenge Moon-gwang, Geun-sae stabs Ki-jung with a kitchen knife in front of the horrified guests. Da-song suffers another seizure upon seeing Geun-sae, and a struggle breaks out until Chung-sook kills Geun-sae with a skewer. While Ki-taek tends to Ki-jung, Mr Park orders him to drive Da-song to the hospital. In the chaos, Ki-taek, upon seeing Mr Park's disgusted reaction to Geun-sae's smell, takes the knife and kills Mr. Park before fleeing the scene.
Weeks later, Ki-woo wakes up after brain surgery. He and Chung-sook are convicted of fraud and put on probation. Ki-jung has died from her injury and Ki-taek, wanted for Mr Park's murder, has vanished. Geun-sae's motives for the attack are a mystery to the public. Ki-woo watches the Parks' home, which has been sold to a German family unaware of its history, and sees a message in Morse code from the flickering lights. It is from Ki-taek, who escaped into the bunker and now survives by scavenging from the new homeowners. Still living in the banjiha with his mother, Ki-woo writes a letter to Ki-taek, vowing to earn enough money to one day purchase the house and free his father.
Cast
The romanisation of the names of characters are as appeared in the official English subtitles, translated by Darcy Paquet.
Song Kang-ho as Kim Ki-taek (김기택; Gim Gitaek), father of the Kim family
Choi Woo-shik as Kim Ki-woo (Kevin; 김기우; Gim Giu), son of the Kim family
Park So-dam as Kim Ki-jung (Jessica; 김기정; Gim Gijeong), daughter of the Kim family
Jang Hye-jin as Park Chung-sook (박충숙; Bak Chungsuk), mother of the Kim family
Lee Sun-kyun as Park Dong-ik (Nathan; 박동익; Bak Dongik), father of the Park family
Cho Yeo-jeong as Choi Yeon-gyo (최연교; Choe Yeongyo), mother of the Park family
Jung Ji-so as Park Da-hye (박다혜; Bak Dahye), daughter of the Park family
Jung Hyeon-jun as Park Da-song (박다송; Bak Dasong), son of the Park family
Lee Jung-eun as Gook Moon-gwang (국문광; Guk Mungwang), the housekeeper
Park Myung-hoon as Oh Geun-sae (오근세; O Geunse), Moon-gwang's husband
Park Geun-rok as Kim Ki-taek's predecessor as Park Dong-ik's chauffeur, who is only mentioned with his family name Yoon (윤; Yun)
Park Seo-joon as Min-hyuk (민혁; Minhyeok), Ki-woo's friend (cameo appearance)[12]
Production
Development
The idea for Parasite originated in 2013. While working on Snowpiercer, Bong was encouraged by a theatre actor friend to write a play. He had been a tutor for the son of a wealthy family in Seoul in his early 20s, and considered turning his experience into a stage production.[13] The film's title, Parasite, was selected by Bong as it served a double meaning, which he had to convince the film's marketing group to use. Bong said "Because the story is about the poor family infiltrating and creeping into the rich house, it seems very obvious that Parasite refers to the poor family, and I think that's why the marketing team was a little hesitant. But if you look at it the other way, you can say that rich family, they're also parasites in terms of labor. They can't even wash dishes, they can't drive themselves, so they leech off the poor family's labor. So both are parasites."[14]
Writing
After completing Snowpiercer, Bong wrote a 15-page film treatment for the first half of Parasite, which his production assistant on Snowpiercer, Han Jin-won, turned into three different drafts of the screenplay.[13] After finishing Okja, Bong returned to the project and finished the script; Han received credit as a co-writer.[13]
Bong said the film was influenced by the 1960 Korean "domestic Gothic" film The Housemaid in which a middle-class family's stability is threatened by the arrival of a disruptive interloper in the form of household help.[15] The incident of Christine and Léa Papin—two live-in maids who murdered their employers in 1930s France—also served as a source of inspiration to Bong.[16] Bong also considered his own past, where he had tutored for a rich family. Bong said "I got this feeling that I was infiltrating the private lives of complete strangers. Every week I would go into their house, and I thought how fun it would be if I could get all my friends to infiltrate the house one by one."[17] Additionally, the element of Moon-gwang having an allergy to peaches was inspired by one of Bong's university friends having this allergy, as Bong confirmed in a Reddit AMA.[18]
Darcy Paquet, an American residing in South Korea, served as translator for the English subtitles and worked directly with Bong.[19] Paquet rendered Jjapaguri or Chapaguri (짜파구리), a dish cooked by a character in the film, as ram-don, meaning ramen-udon. It is a mix of Chapagetti and Neoguri.[20] The English version of the film shows packages labelled in English "ramyeon" and "udon" to highlight to English speakers how the name was created. Paquet believed the word ram-don did not previously exist as he found no results on Google.[21] On one occasion, Paquet used Oxford University as a reference instead of Seoul National University, and in another, used WhatsApp as the messaging application instead of KakaoTalk.[19] Paquet chose Oxford over Harvard University because of Bong's affinity for the United Kingdom, and because Paquet believed using Harvard would be "too obvious a choice."[21] Paquet wrote, "[I]n order for humor to work, people need to understand it immediately. With an unfamiliar word, the humor is lost."[21]
Following the release of the film, on 16 February 2020, Indian film producer P. L. Thenappan challenged the originality of the film script and threatened to take legal action against the makers of Parasite for "story theft" against his 1999 Tamil film Minsara Kanna. The allegation did not receive significant ongoing attention in the media and has not yet been adjudicated in a court.[22][23]
Filming
Principal photography for Parasite began on 18 May 2018[24][25] and ended 124 days later on 19 September 2018.[26] Filming took place around Seoul and in Jeonju.[27] The director of photography for the film is Hong Kyung-pyo.
The Parks' house was a specially constructed set. The first floor and the garden were constructed on an empty outdoor lot, while the basement and second floor were constructed on set.[28] Bong, as part of the scripting, had also designed the basic layout of this home. "It's like its own universe inside this film. Each character and each team has spaces that they take over that they can infiltrate, and also secret spaces that they don't know."[29] A fictional architect Namgoong Hyeonja had been introduced as the home's designer and the previous owner before the Parks, and production designer Lee Ha-jun considered the function and form of the house based on how Namgoong would have designed it.[28]
Lee said, "Since Mr Park's house is built by an architect in the story, it wasn't easy finding the right approach to designing the house...I'm not an architect, and I think there's a difference in how an architect envisions a space and how a production designer does. We prioritize blocking and camera angles while architects build spaces for people to actually live in and thus design around people. So I think the approach is very different."[29] For example, Ha-jun established that Namgoong would have used the first floor's living room to appreciate the garden, so it was built with a single wide window and only spartan seating options for this function.[28] Some of the interior artwork in the house sets were by South Korea artist Seung-mo Park, including existing artwork of hers and some explicitly created for the film.[28] Further, design of the home and of its interiors were aimed to make the set amenable for filming at the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, favoring wide and deeper rooms rather than height.[29]
Lee said the sun was an important factor when building the outdoor set. "The sun's direction was a crucial point of consideration while we were searching for outdoor lots," explained Lee. "We had to remember the sun's position during our desired time frame and determine the positions and sizes of the windows accordingly. In terms of practical lighting, the DP [director of photography Hong Kyung-pyo] had specific requests regarding the color. He wanted sophisticated indirect lighting and the warmth from tungsten light sources. Before building the set, the DP and I visited the lot several times to check the sun's movement at each time, and we decided on the set's location together."[29]
Set design
The Kim's semi-basement apartment and its street was also built on set, partially out of necessity for filming the flooding scenes.[29] Lee Ha-jun visited and photographed several abandoned villages and towns in South Korea scheduled to be torn down to help inform the set design. He also created stories for the Kim's neighbors and added details of those residents along the street to improve the authenticity of the street's appearance.[28]
Editing
According to editor Yang Jin-mo, Bong Joon-ho chose to shoot the film without traditional coverage. To give them more editing options with limited shots, they sometimes stitched together different takes of the same shot.[30]
The principal release and editing of the film was done for release in color. A black and white version of the film was produced prior to the world premiere in Cannes and debuted on 26 January 2020 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and was rescreened from 29 to 31 January. It also received a limited release in some countries.[31][32]
Music
The film's score was written by South Korean composer Jung Jae-il, who also wrote the score for Bong Joon-ho's 2017 film Okja. Jung's music for Parasite consists of "minimalist piano pieces, punctuated with light percussion," which sets the film's "tense atmosphere."[33] Excerpts from Handel's opera Rodelinda and the 1964 Italian song "In ginocchio da te" by Gianni Morandi also appear in the film.[33]
The end credits song "Soju One Glass" (Korean: 소주 한 잔) was written by Bong and is performed by Choi Woo-shik, who also played the main character Ki-woo.[34] When the song made it to the December 2019 shortlist for the 92nd Academy Awards in the Best Original Song category,[34] it was listed under a grammatically correct English title, "A Glass of Soju".[35]
The English titles of the scores listed below are as displayed in the back cover of the album and in the international digital releases of the soundtrack;[36][37] the romanisation of names and nouns used are slightly different from those seen in the official English subtitles as translated by Darcy Paquet.
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