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Bottom Liner posted:Close. The son tells the dad he’s going to make a lot of money and buy the house one day, which leads us into that scene in the future where it looks like he is legit doing so, then it cuts back to him writing the letter so it’s ambiguous if that’s a dream/fantasy or not. Old post but it's 100% a fantasy. The final scene of the film is the son writing the letter in his apartment with the same shot of stinky socks and sagging walls as the one that it opened on -- the point being, unfortunately, he's learned absolutely nothing and is being roped back into the exact same fantasy of success and class mobility that covered for capitalism destroying his family in the first place. e: ahaha wow i should have checked, like 6 other people said the exact same thing RichterIX posted:The Host hasn't come up in here I don't think but some of the laughs reminded me of it a lot. Anybody who hasn't seen it is missing out, it's great. The Host is the movie that helped me finally articulate what I find so appealing about Korean cinema -- there's this incredible fluidity between humor and despair (or other deeply, sincerely felt negative emotions) that Hollywood and American art in general is usually too cowardly and embarrassed to deploy. (And that would make American audiences whine about "tonal whiplash," as if it's a problem with art and not just the actual state of reality around us.) Granted I'm only really familiar with the works of about four Korean film directors and a couple of TV shows, so maybe I'm overgeneralizing, but I also literally can't think of a single exception in anything I've watched. They all do this and I can't get enough of it. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 10:42
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Bottom Liner posted:It’s very much a direct criticism of wealth and the haves vs the have nots. The rich people are definitely bad, just not intentionally so (arguably). The rich family are repulsive but they're also almost comically naive. They're bad people, but they're not wicked people -- they're completely unremarkable products of their environment, which is ultimately a much more savage indictment than if they were scheming monsters.
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Dec 13, 2019 10:58
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The rich family are repulsive but they're also almost comically naive. They're bad people, but they're not wicked people -- they're completely unremarkable products of their environment, which is ultimately a much more savage indictment than if they were scheming monsters. It’d be too easy to make them horrible horrible like intentionally evil people. The fact that people can walk out of this not thinking and almost? Feel sorry for them is amazing.
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Dec 13, 2019 11:11
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Finally got to see this, and it really is great. The way that Bong builds and releases tension is fantastic. My absolute favourite is when Moon-Gwang returns, and asks to go into the basement. Myself, I thought she was going to commit suicide. And then when she doesn't come up, and Chung-Sook goes down to the basement to find her, and before we see anything we hear the sounds of some kind of struggle. Then the camera moves over and we see Moon-Gwang, completely lateral, six feet above the floor, wedged between the wall and the shelf. Tension released by a phenomenal visual gag. Other thoughts following from what people have said: Flying Zamboni posted:(On Mr. Park and Ki-Taek) It strikes me that the two biggest moments of friction between Mr. Park and Ki-Taek are when Ki-Taek offers empathy. Park finds the idea that they have something in common intolerable. The second time Ki-Taek comments about being a father, at the party, Park interjects and specifically reminds Ki-Taek that their relationship is employer-employee. Bottom Liner posted:Close. The son tells the dad he’s going to make a lot of money and buy the house one day, which leads us into that scene in the future where it looks like he is legit doing so, then it cuts back to him writing the letter so it’s ambiguous if that’s a dream/fantasy or not. We end with Ki-Woo still wholly believing the myth of meritocracy, and aspiring to be like the Parks. This is the only way he can imagine liberating his father from being entombed by wealth/being reduced to invisible labour. AccountSupervisor posted:The shot of the basement guy peaking out and looking at the child has to be one of the most unsettling frames Ive ever seen in a movie. And of course Da-Song is traumatized by seeing the labour that supports the family. Yeon-Kyo then gives a story about how ghosts (the unseen labour) are augurs of good fortune.
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Dec 15, 2019 04:56
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Oh yeah, does anyone have any thoughts on Chung-Sook apparently being a former Olympian? Another note on the falsity of meritocracy?
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Dec 15, 2019 05:18
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The mother was not joking when she said she could beat the husband. This movie was amazing, the line about being easy to be nice if you're rich and that money 'irons out the flaws', drat.
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Dec 15, 2019 05:33
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I think one of the most important lines was when the basement dweller says "Just let me live down here." It's pretty hard to start the revolution when you're outnumbered and surviving on scraps. Talking with working class people all my life, I've heard some form of that surrender over and over. "Just let me live down here." Not in a basement, of course, but in small apartments, working two terrible jobs, eating bad food and washing away the sorrow with bad drinks. Like Sorry To Bother You, this isn't a movie about overthrowing capitalism. Just about surviving it.
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Dec 15, 2019 06:59
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Animal-Mother posted:I think one of the most important lines was when the basement dweller says "Just let me live down here." It's pretty hard to start the revolution when you're outnumbered and surviving on scraps. Talking with working class people all my life, I've heard some form of that surrender over and over. "Just let me live down here." Not in a basement, of course, but in small apartments, working two terrible jobs, eating bad food and washing away the sorrow with bad drinks. i seem to remember sorry to bother you ending very differently
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Dec 15, 2019 16:29
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Serf posted:i seem to remember sorry to bother you ending very differently I think Animal-Mother's point is reasonable. The entire of Sorry to Bother You up until the very end is of people trying to survive. The big conflict is about getting a union to improve their lives. Cash's personal development starts with "I'm just out here trying to survive" clashing against his desire to be famous (or otherwise special), and ends with him accepting that his desire for personal success is toxic and learning to 'survive' together with his friends. The force of the final scene is that all this 'just surviving' is not enough, and so long as you're labour, the only way forward is revolution. So I think that A-M saying the movie is about people surviving within capitalism is entirely fair. Similarly, a youtube video mentioned that the end credits song in Parasite, sung by Ki-Woo, was originally titled "354 years." 354 years being the length of time Ki-Woo would have to work to be able to afford the house. In this sense, the end of both movies really are similar. We have the attempt at personal success within the system (Cash's redone garage apartment, Ki-Woo's fantasy about buying the house), the brute reimposition of their role as labour (literally, in StBY as Cash turns into an equisapien), and then a coda where success within the system is impossible. The one difference, I suppose, is that StBY indulges the revolutionary imagination while Parasite confronts us with irony.
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Dec 15, 2019 17:31
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Hand Knit posted:I think Animal-Mother's point is reasonable. The entire of Sorry to Bother You up until the very end is of people trying to survive. The big conflict is about getting a union to improve their lives. Cash's personal development starts with "I'm just out here trying to survive" clashing against his desire to be famous (or otherwise special), and ends with him accepting that his desire for personal success is toxic and learning to 'survive' together with his friends. The force of the final scene is that all this 'just surviving' is not enough, and so long as you're labour, the only way forward is revolution. the movie is a roadmap to revolution. cash and his friends organize their union, fight for concessions from the capitalist, and in the end he comes to the realization that surviving capitalism means destroying it in parasite, ki-taek is not a revolutionary, but he has a brief moment of revolutionary action. the tragedy of the film is that ki-woo fails to understand the lesson in all of this. the contrast between cash and ki-woo is pretty interesting
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Dec 15, 2019 17:43
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The Host is the movie that helped me finally articulate what I find so appealing about Korean cinema -- there's this incredible fluidity between humor and despair (or other deeply, sincerely felt negative emotions) that Hollywood and American art in general is usually too cowardly and embarrassed to deploy. (And that would make American audiences whine about "tonal whiplash," as if it's a problem with art and not just the actual state of reality around us.) Can you recommend more movies/shows that illustrate this? sounds fascinating.
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Dec 15, 2019 18:16
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Can you recommend more movies/shows that illustrate this? sounds fascinating. any of Bong Joon-Ho's movies, I don't think you can go wrong here. The Host stands out in particular, which is why I mentioned it, but it's absolutely true of Snowpiercer and Okja as well. The Wailing by Na Hong-jin. One of my favorites of all time, technically and thematically fantastic film, if you only see one thing on my recommendation make it this one. It's a horror film about the interplay of different faiths in Korea, corruption among authority figures, and anti-Japanese racism, among other things. 26 Years by Cho Geun-hyun -- fair warning, it's a fascinating movie but not an especially good one. it's an adaptation of a webtoon, has an insanely provocative premise (it's about a fictional plot to assassinate a real life former military dictator, who's still alive, wealthy, and influential in Korean politics) and was just barely funded via individual online donations. it's also very obviously edited to hell to cut certain plot beats that are necessary to understand what's going on but were presumably too risque to release on film (most notably how the conspirators manage to get their hands on a sniper rifle) you've probably seen Oldboy but it definitely qualifies Romance is a Bonus Book is a TV show, and going for a very different audience than everything I just mentioned -- it's a romantic comedy, with the emphasis on comedy, but it's capable of flipping to "Dan-i's life is miserable for completely unjust, systemic reasons and here's why" in an instant while still feeling perfectly natural I haven't watched the whole show (a friend turned me on to it recently but I've been really busy) but it came highly recommended to me and I both very much enjoyed what I have seen + it fits the bill. e: oh poo poo I almost forgot, Lucid Dream by Kim Joon-sung. i don't want to spoil the details on this one, but let me say this: i was bored out of my mind for about the first 1/3 of its runtime, and I still can't exactly say it's a GOOD movie, but i promise it's worth seeing it through to the end just the same. at a certain point the movie's premise starts escalating and just never stops. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Dec 15, 2019 |
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Dec 15, 2019 18:37
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Thanks a ton for your thoughtful list of recommendations! I will give them all a shot.
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Dec 16, 2019 02:27
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finally got around to seeing it. What a loving movie I don't know if someone with more insight into Korean culture can say, but was the rich wife new money? There was that thin veneer of having her poo poo together which may have explained (to me anyway) why she was so quick to defer to people in that "yes your idea is very good since it was totally what I was thinking too" way. I know the chaebols are notorious for basically being oligarch families but I don't know if someone like the husband could actually be self made as a startup
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Dec 16, 2019 17:15
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When I first saw the movie, I thought the knife went through the girl and poked the little boy, watching it again made me realize the little boy just fainted, which made the parents ignoring the girl bleeding out on their lawn double heartless.
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Dec 16, 2019 17:21
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Thanks a ton for your thoughtful list of recommendations! In addition to what catfish said, the handmaiden is a lot of fun and available on Amazon prime. I would also recommend bong joon hos Mother before his American productions, it’s fantastic. And his memories of murder is a classic.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:38
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mary had a little clam posted:How did we read the Native American imagery? It was an interesting choice in a Korean movie taking place in South Korea. Obviously Native American imagery evokes colonialism, genocide, forced migration, forced conversion, etc. That video someone linked above mentioned that for them, it evoked the idea of how colonizers think they can get rid of indigenous people but those people always continue to hang on in the margins. In my opinion, I think it's less the actual Native American imagery but instead shows that due to the Park family's wealth they are able to indulge in the whims of the kid. It's foreign and exotic enough (to South Koreans) that it wouldn't be easy to pop down to your local store and buy the toys or teepee. Alan Smithee posted:finally got around to seeing it. What a loving movie I wouldn't jump immediately to the conclusion that she's new money, but it plays into the stereotypes that some wealthy are wealthy due to circumstance rather than being "smart." I asked my wife about it and she said that Park's wife probably would have been upper-middle class growing up, gone to a decent university, and hunted for a husband from a SKY school.
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Dec 17, 2019 17:15
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kimcicle posted:In my opinion, I think it's less the actual Native American imagery but instead shows that due to the Park family's wealth they are able to indulge in the whims of the kid. It's foreign and exotic enough (to South Koreans) that it wouldn't be easy to pop down to your local store and buy the toys or teepee. Indigenous Peoples are real people whose real suffering is reduced to a game for the Parks. More than that, Indigenous Peoples are reduced to characters that the Parks dress up as for fun. This makes the imagery fit well with the sex scene where Nathan asks Yeon-Kyo that they role play as the driver and the fantasy meth-addicted prostitute.
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Dec 17, 2019 17:35
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That sex scene was great. Buy me drugs!
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Dec 17, 2019 18:02
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Is there any special significance to basement guy's hurt face at the end? Does it suggest some particular means of escape from his bondage, or does it just mark him as appropriately terrifying for his final slasher role?
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Dec 18, 2019 05:22
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You mean the blood on his face? He was slamming his head on the light button to try to give the kid a Morse code while his wife was dying
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Dec 18, 2019 06:30
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Maha posted:Is there any special significance to basement guy's hurt face at the end? Does it suggest some particular means of escape from his bondage, or does it just mark him as appropriately terrifying for his final slasher role? Filmspotting (the podcast) remarked that the bloody face is a "red face," which may connect with the kid's fondness for Native American imagery, although I'm not sure if they actually made a complete thought out of it or just made the observation. I'm not sure what the Native American stuff had to do with the themes of the film, aside from the general theme of exploitation, so I can't really make the firmest connection with that character, but wanted to throw out something at least. He was also already a ghost, so what's another monster?
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Dec 18, 2019 08:13
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I think it’s exploitation themed but consider some details that give it some shape: The Parks looked down on the driver because he (not really) had sex in their car and was doing drugs, then they got off on appropriating his supposed criminality for pillow talk The Parks had a skit about the savagery of the native Americans and yet their son enjoys dressing up as a native and camping in a teepee The teepee is Made In America by the white people who genocided the people who lived in teepees Those in power gently caress over the powerless and pick over their bones for cultural scraps that they can appropriate for their own enjoyment Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 09:06
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So browsing through tweets about Cats lead me to a film called "Six Degrees of Seperation" from the 90s that seems to share some surface similarities with this film. I want to see how bad it is at handling similar topics.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:27
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Six Degrees of Separation is the crazy imaginings of the Parks about their employees but true. It's also written by the upper-class person it happened to, at least for the play. Main reason to watch the movie is for Will Smith when nobody thought he could do serious acting.
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Dec 31, 2019 06:00
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Subs > Dubs
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Jan 7, 2020 09:19
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Subs are greater than dubs, but I’d still watch a version of Parasite where the dad is voiced by Goku and the son voiced by Kaneda.
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Jan 7, 2020 15:27
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https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1213999361341804544?s=20
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Jan 7, 2020 15:34
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Been meaning to reply to this thread, but everyone else was saying a lot of what I wanted better than I could. I'd just like to add that I loved how tight this movie was, with no wasted moments or dropped plot points. One of my favorite lines was when Mr. Park commented that the previous housekeeper "ate enough for two".
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Jan 7, 2020 20:04
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He’s right
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Jan 7, 2020 21:10
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My only bugbear with subs is that those who don’t know the language can never tell if the subs are accurate. A lot of subs either are plain bad or alter the original speech to a more flowery style. As a Chinese speaker I can’t count the number of times when the audience were reacting to something in a Chinese movie’s subs that wasn’t there in the original speech. It feels kinda... wrong, and makes me question with all the subbed shows I watch.
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Jan 8, 2020 02:51
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Sometimes you gotta for the flow of dialogue, 1:1 translations are always way awkward
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Jan 8, 2020 03:17
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Just watched this and had a two hour conversation with my mate about it. This is a great film I absolutely loved it and I'm certain I'll be chewing on it for a while.
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Jan 9, 2020 13:58
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Enjoying how many oblivious rich people are praising Parasite. https://twitter.com/bearbeare/status/1213576269968953351?s=19
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Jan 11, 2020 04:25
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Prince Myshkin posted:Enjoying how many oblivious rich people are praising Parasite. Wonder how many poor people realize it’s about them too
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Jan 11, 2020 05:16
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My friend's take on it was "don't stray from your station in life because trying will own you"
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Jan 11, 2020 05:18
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Prince Myshkin posted:Enjoying how many oblivious rich people are praising Parasite. As far as Elon "Marx was a capitalist" Musk is concerned I'm pretty sure he was just trolling.
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Jan 11, 2020 11:39
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https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1192167864964272128?lang=en https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1141416156722552833 https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/1141846625645555712 Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Jan 11, 2020 |
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Jan 11, 2020 13:32
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YaketySass posted:As far as Elon "Marx was a capitalist" Musk is concerned I'm pretty sure he was just trolling. I dunno if he's even capable of the high-level thought trolling would require between bouts of whatever rich person gas he's huffing at the moment. You can include Obama putting it on his list of year's best, regardless.
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Jan 11, 2020 14:46
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You guys know people can enjoy a movie and not fully grasp its themes right? It’s kind of an extremely common thing.
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Jan 11, 2020 15:29
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