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Uncle Boogeyman posted:The Kim Family did nothing wrong Their lack of class solidarity with the former housekeeper and her husband led to their downfall  .
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Nov 12, 2019 19:37
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Yeah, the movie certainly makes you pull for them early, going as far as to show the life changing amount of money is completely i significant to the Parks, til the point where everything goes wrong and then they (mostly the father) do actual awful things, even though you still sympathize with his motivations.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:51
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Equeen posted:Their lack of class solidarity with the former housekeeper and her husband led to their downfall fine but i'm just glad i wasn't the only one in my theater who cheered when Papa Kim stabbed Papa Park (do i need to spoil that or are we all cool here?)
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Nov 12, 2019 23:57
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I still cant get over covering your nose because 'ew stinky' when there's brutal murder happening all around you. I think that would be the least of my worries.
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Nov 13, 2019 00:03
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Segue posted:Oh I absolutely hated Joker, no argument there, for the exact reasons you quoted. The conversation in Parasite about how it's easy to be nice to others when you're wealthy is a way more powerful statement than anything Joker has to say.
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Nov 13, 2019 00:09
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this movie would be an insanely good double feature with Pain and Gain
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Nov 13, 2019 01:56
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This was the best movie I've seen this year by far. This does an excellent job showing the ways that capitalism can dehumanize you. The man in the basement is very much representative of Mr. Park's ideal employee: a man out of sight and out of mind who he doesn't have to talk to and who invisibly performs a menial task that removes a microscopic inconvenience from his life. The man in the basement has tied his identity so closely to his job that he has trouble remembering existing as a person outside of the basement. This can also be seen in the moment at the party where Mr. Park and the father are hiding behind the bushes. Park gets frustrated when Kim is clearly not enthusiastic to be participating in their birthday skit. Park is upset because Kim is unintentionally reminding him that he is a person that still exists outside of his function as his employee.
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Nov 13, 2019 03:12
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this was an incredible episode of Always Sunny
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Nov 13, 2019 07:18
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DamnitGannet posted:I still cant get over covering your nose because 'ew stinky' when there's brutal murder happening all around you. I think that would be the least of my worries. The entire "smell" motif was such a great and simple way to show that dehumanizing disconnect between the classes.
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Nov 13, 2019 07:27
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Steve Yun posted:The poor are too busy fighting each other over scraps to cooperate in taking down the rich I don’t know poo poo about property law, but weren’t the things that they ask for when pretending to be a housekeeping agency all the papers to the house itself? With the daughter’s already-proven forgery skills they probably could have just yoinked the house out from under them. MORE TAXES WHEN posted:It was really good and I just don't really have a lot to say about it. A right-wing argument of the film would probably focus on how the cleaning lady and her husband were “good” workers who respected the house and didn’t have big rowdy meals while the owners were gone and then get revenge on the family who stole their jobs. Honestly that instance is what’s keeping the film’s metaphor from being iron-clad for me. I get that it’s actually about the difficulty of solidarity under capitalism but it’s very easy to interpret it just as “well this wouldn’t have happened if they acted more rich.” Pirate Jet fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Nov 13, 2019 |
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Nov 13, 2019 08:46
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Watched this last night, it was amazing. Not going to spoiler my thoughts because I think we are past the statute of limitations for that and honestly if you haven't seen this movie you've already read way too much, go see it! My wife pointed out that the Kims' big "scam" was getting hired to do regular jobs, so it was cool to see that mentioned on the first page. Even regarding Jessica the fake art teacher, mostly what Mrs. Park honestly wants and what a kid that age even would need is someone to babysit them and do art with them, and she does that just fine. I think one thing that's been undersold is how much the Kims were actually responsible for "losing" the housekeeper and driver their jobs (as well as how much of the Parks' crime is just simple dopey ignorance). They certainly play on the Parks' class biases to get these two fired, but what they actually do is pretty minimal. Jessica simply takes off her panties in the car and this has Mr. Park immediately jump to the totally reasonable conclusion that his driver has a fetish for ejaculating in his boss's car seat and is doing so with a meth addicted poor woman. Mr. Kim convinces Mrs. Park that the housekeeper has loving TB (can you think of a better "poor people" disease?) with very little argument. Both of these scenarios could have been pretty easily resolved/avoided by them just talking to their employees; especially in the case of the illness, while there should be an expectation of privacy there is at least the pretense that with a child in the house that the housekeeper would provide a doctor's note. There's a lot more the Parks do which is beyond just them being nice but clueless rich folk. They fetishize the poor and Mr. Park is obsessed with "crossing the line" but this is kept purposely vague and mostly seems to be "don't do anything to annoy him or make him think you don't offer him total respect and deference". Someone earlier mentioned that they prioritized their fainted child over their stabbed employee, but they also ignore their housekeeper literally still in a life or death struggle, while Mr. Park tells Kim essentially to stop dicking around and get the car. Flying Zamboni posted:This was the best movie I've seen this year by far. This is an excellent post. The scene with Mr. Park and Kim behind the bushes really stuck with me and I wanted to add some more thoughts on it. Mr. Kim is being reflective -- I read it as him thinking about family in regards to their tragedy with the flood as well as the basement dweller's predicament ("you're trying your best too, you love her after all") -- but Mr. Park's immediate instinct is to jump to "we're paying you for this, I own you". *apologies for using the romanized names and family names, I'm usually bad with names to begin with and the Korean names mostly slid off me except for Da-song who was discussed a good deal
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Nov 13, 2019 18:24
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsrgL3kPgvo Neat video pointing out a lot more symbolism and subtext I missed Like, the ramen-don was a mix of high class and low class The rain destroys lower class homes but for the rich it means no camping trip and the kid still camps in the back yard
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Nov 15, 2019 01:42
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Steve Yun posted:The rain destroys lower class homes but for the rich it means no camping trip and the kid still camps in the back yard I haven't yet watched the video so maybe it mentions this but the part of the aftermath of the storm that jumped out at me was the mom telling her friends over the phone that the impromptu party was to move past Da-song's "trauma" from the previous night. It's a ludicrous way of describing having to cancel a camping trip especially in comparison to what the Kim family and their entire neighborhood went through at the same time.
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Nov 15, 2019 02:09
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Equeen posted:Their lack of class solidarity with the former housekeeper and her husband led to their downfall heckyeahpathy posted:this was an incredible episode of Always Sunny God bless you guys for perfectly capturing my thoughts while watching this. I knew nothing about this movie going in aside from the fact that it was about class/capitalism and I will be thinking about it for the next few months. Definitely my movie of the year.
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Nov 15, 2019 04:10
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Flying Zamboni posted:I haven't yet watched the video so maybe it mentions this but the part of the aftermath of the storm that jumped out at me was the mom telling her friends over the phone that the impromptu party was to move past Da-song's "trauma" from the previous night. It's a ludicrous way of describing having to cancel a camping trip especially in comparison to what the Kim family and their entire neighborhood went through at the same time. She also talks about how the rain washed away the pollution which, well...
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Nov 15, 2019 04:51
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Getting the math tutor/art teacher jobs was cool and good. Getting the driver fired was unethical, but he was a young man who probably wouldn't have that much trouble finding a new job. Hovewer, getting the middle aged housekeeper fired (and making her pretty much homeless) by exploiting her severe allergy is horrifying. The Kims were in the wrong here in any conceivable way. Three of them had a job at that point so there was no pressure to make the mom the housekeeper. They got greedy, which led to their downfall. The housekeeper is revealed to be sketchy of course, which makes getting her fired more acceptable, but the Kim's didn't know that when they were poisoning her.
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Nov 15, 2019 07:36
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You got a lot wrong there to the point where I’m not sure you empathized with the characters at all, and I’m not talking only the Kim family.
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Nov 15, 2019 07:50
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Was the housekeeper sketchy? It seemed whatever lying she did was to save her sick husband, which seems reasonable
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Nov 15, 2019 08:13
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Yeah she was completely innocent, her "crime" was a very sympathetic one. The Kims view her as an unfortunate but necessary casualty of Making It In This World, same for the driver - plus they remain blind to her own class background. Again it feeds back into the idea of their tragic downfall coming from a lack of solidarity against their real enemy. They do express some regret for their actions during the drunk scene, but justify them with "well they'll find other jobs, family above all!!!!!"
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Nov 15, 2019 08:19
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Bottom Liner posted:You got a lot wrong there to the point where I’m not sure you empathized with the characters at all, and I’m not talking only the Kim family. I actually didn't get anything wrong, duh. Steve Yun posted:Was the housekeeper sketchy? It seemed whatever lying she did was to save her sick husband, which seems reasonable She was "sketchy" in the sense that she was doing something illegal that she would get fired for if her employer found out. It would still be bad to get her fired for that but not as bad as poisoning her and fabricating a story about tuberculosis.
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Nov 15, 2019 13:22
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Captain Jesus posted:Hovewer, getting the middle aged housekeeper fired (and making her pretty much homeless) by exploiting her severe allergy is horrifying. The Kims were in the wrong here in any conceivable way. Three of them had a job at that point so there was no pressure to make the mom the housekeeper. They got greedy, which led to their downfall. I still feel like this greatly overstates the Kims' actual power in this situation, how much they "got" anything to happen. Purposely triggering her allergy is scummy as hell but Mrs. Park is still the one who fires a long trusted employee for being sick (with a stereotypical "poor" disease no less) without even attempting to verify. The Kims might have thought their actions would lead to her homelessness, but Mrs. Park is operating from the same logic while also thinking she has a deadly disease which she also might now not be able to afford proper treatment for. Again, a lot of people seemed to have read the Parks as just being gullible simpletons who will believe anything, but what they believe is very specifically: that the servant class is essentially a bunch of pimps, crack whores and lepers.
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Nov 15, 2019 14:57
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Guy A. Person posted:I still feel like this greatly overstates the Kims' actual power in this situation, how much they "got" anything to happen. Purposely triggering her allergy is scummy as hell but Mrs. Park is still the one who fires a long trusted employee for being sick (with a stereotypical "poor" disease no less) without even attempting to verify. The Kims might have thought their actions would lead to her homelessness, but Mrs. Park is operating from the same logic while also thinking she has a deadly disease which she also might now not be able to afford proper treatment for. I agree that Mrs. Park is guilty of what you said in this situation (I didn't mean to imply that she was in the right to fire the housekeeper or that the Parks were somehow innocent) but that doesn't exonerate the Kims. They were acting with the intent to get the housekeeper fired and without regard for her health or well-being. If she went into anaphylaxis and died they would be liable for murder. The Kims and the Parks both have a separate kind of responsibility for the outcome. My point is that exploiting horrible rich people is good but intentionally loving over your fellow working men while doing so is bad.
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Nov 15, 2019 15:16
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Captain Jesus posted:I agree that Mrs. Park is guilty of what you said in this situation (I didn't mean to imply that she was in the right to fire the housekeeper or that the Parks were somehow innocent) but that doesn't exonerate the Kims. They were acting with the intent to get the housekeeper fired and without regard for her health or well-being. If she went into anaphylaxis and died they would be liable for murder. The Kims and the Parks both have a separate kind of responsibility for the outcome. Yeah I for sure get that, I just think the power the Kims actually have is effectively limited to spreading salacious rumors. They were confident it would work and they turned out to be right because of their knowledge of society, but their schemes could have very easily crashed down around them with even basic communication. Also a key theme of the movie is how difficult that class solidarity is when you're basically being pitted against each other to the death (in the logic of the movie quite literally). Look how quickly the "innocent" housekeeper turned on the Kims when she got some power over them -- even tho pushing the send button would have meant her own downfall.
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Nov 15, 2019 15:26
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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. I was wondering if it was a play on the trope of building "white" society on Indian burial grounds, with the Park's house sitting on top of a sick, poverty-stricken worker. If the film is about who's on top of who, the image of colonists living over the bones of their indigenous victims seems pretty apt.
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Nov 15, 2019 17:35
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Guy A. Person posted:Yeah I for sure get that, I just think the power the Kims actually have is effectively limited to spreading salacious rumors. They were confident it would work and they turned out to be right because of their knowledge of society, but their schemes could have very easily crashed down around them with even basic communication. Yeah, not to excuse the Kims but the housekeeper was super pumped at the opportunity to deliver them to the Parks as scammers so that intra-class fighting cuts both ways, although you could argue that she's excited by the prospect of revenge rather than by some idea of regaining her status by alerting the Parks. Edit: this made me think about something else-- the housekeeper is basically "old poor" servant class, having been with the house through two owners. She can't even recognize the usurpers as being of the same class. RichterIX fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Nov 15, 2019 |
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Nov 15, 2019 22:38
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RichterIX posted:Edit: this made me think about something else-- the housekeeper is basically "old poor" servant class, having been with the house through two owners. She can't even recognize the usurpers as being of the same class. lol yup, she's like "we appreciated the Mozart and poo poo and all these scumbags did is drink their booze" while she massages her unbathed basement husband This is such an incredible, multi-layered movie, goddamn
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Nov 15, 2019 23:12
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Really enjoyed this film, one of my favorites of the year.
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Nov 15, 2019 23:51
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Guy A. Person posted:Yeah I for sure get that, I just think the power the Kims actually have is effectively limited to spreading salacious rumors. They were confident it would work and they turned out to be right because of their knowledge of society, but their schemes could have very easily crashed down around them with even basic communication. You do also have to bear in mind what the Parks don't know. The audience knows that the Kims have a vested interest in getting the other workers fired, the Parks genuinely don't. The Kims even strategize to ensure the Parks don't figure it out by coordinating with each other. The Kims are largely in the right except for this and the attempt to rat out the housekeeper to the police.
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Nov 16, 2019 00:05
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Just saw it. Liked it a lot, hope it gets best picture. Two little things that stood out: -the dogs getting hyper expensive food and treats. A family member dog sits for the wealthy and if anything the movie was underselling it -Kirkland Signature cheese on the counter during the end party!
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Nov 16, 2019 07:33
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Just caught this tonight and I was blown away. Favorite movie of the year, maybe the last few years. Packed house too, though it’s not playing on many screens in the area and the audience was mostly rich white folk since it was the local arthouse cinema. Would love to exit poll those people to see what they think and who in the film they identify with. A decent amount of clapping at the end though. There’s a lot to unpack so I’ll just touch on a few points. Regarding the ethicality of the Kims, it seems like it’s missing the larger point to ask whether what they did was right. What they did was the result of the pressures of a capitalist society causing an us-or-them mentality amongst the working class (someone upthread mentioned the crabs in a bucket metaphor). In a sense, taking a job necessarily means that someone else is not getting that job, placing them in potential poverty since there is a limited number of jobs that will pay well enough to live on. Thus the simple act of taking a job is placing someone else in jeopardy so that you can live, due to the design of the system. So assigning blame or fault is moot in the face of the larger ethics of society. The scenarios depicted in the film are, to put it in the films terms, “so metaphorical.” I also really appreciated how vividly Bong depicted a host of different ways people respond to living under the boot of capitalism. The housekeeper’s husband began to worship the rich man upstairs who he doesn’t even know, and forgot what it was like not to live in those conditions. Mr. Kim’s speech about plans was depressing but in a sense kind of accurate. However society views that kind of attitude as defeatist and lacking in ambition, making you undeserving of any kind of success anyway so that we can feel better that you remain poor. Americans would view someone like that as pathetic. A parasite. Ki-woo (Kevin) saw upward mobility as a real possibility, by either marrying into the family or through vague plans of going to school and making a lot of money but both these were depicted as fantasies and nothing actually attainable. The film really drove home how those conditions gently caress people up, even the Parks, who behave immorally but in a way that’s acceptable by society. I’m not very familiar with Korean society and have only seen a dozen or so Korean films but I’m continually surprised with how resonant Bong’s films are with American society. Whoever mentioned High and Low earlier, I definitely think that was at least a small influence here, at least with the imagery and geography.
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Nov 16, 2019 10:25
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Some background on Korea: After the Korean War, South Korea was a sort of revolving door of democracies and dictatorships up until the mid 80’s after which it became a stable capitalist democracy. Older folks remember the poverty of the war and SK was a third world country until there was a capitalistic boom in the late 80’s early 90’s with the government dumping tons of money into investing in various industries. This kind of gets hinted at in the ending of Memories of Murder where you see the main character at his new job as a salesman. He’s riding the new entrepreneurial wave of the 90’s. If you’re in your late 30’s early 40’s you might remember SK was famous for student protests during the 80’s because of the corruption of the government, which also gets touched on in Memories of Murder Rich and poor lived in close proximity when I remember it. I dunno how it is now, but in the 80’s it was common for anyone with a decent house to have a housekeeper/nanny who was either live-in or spent the whole workday cleaning the house and raising the kids. There was a large laborer class. My grandfather was a professor, which was prestigious back in the day, so my grandparents had a live-in housekeeper. I think... because of the explosion of the middle class in Korea, laborers like the Kims might be less common now? Only for more well to do people like the Parks? Nowadays I’m guessing SK is starting to have more segregation of rich/poor? The upscale district of Gangnam didn’t exist until recently. Korea caught up enough that they’re experiencing the tech boom alongside the US now. The govt dumped money into high speed Internet beyond what the US even gets now and that’s why you can easily imagine a tech CEO of a startup like Mr Park Side note: the SK govt dumped tons of money into the film industry in the 90’s and early 2000’s, even investing 50% of production costs, which is why there was an explosion of amazing art house films then. Korean movies were CRAP before the 90’s. Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 12:02
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Saw this a couple of months ago, movie good. I heard it did surprisingly good numbers so I went in expecting perhaps more of a crowd pleaser than Bong Joon-ho's previous movies, but no, it pulls no punch even before the big twist. Question for the thread: do you think there's any special significance to the Kim daughter being the one to die? I read some speculations that she might have been the most capable and level-headed of the four, scam and all, meaning that her death would be more of a gut punch, because she was the closest to having a chance to "make it". But given how the movie hits you with the idea that escaping poverty is largely an illusion, that's probably not it.
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Nov 16, 2019 14:17
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Other posters discussed how some plot points were from Korean political scandals, they also mentioned the family worked as a “rent a family” for weddings. I know that is a thing in Japan, is it also popular in Korea? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry
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Nov 16, 2019 17:57
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Flying Zamboni posted:I haven't yet watched the video so maybe it mentions this but the part of the aftermath of the storm that jumped out at me was the mom telling her friends over the phone that the impromptu party was to move past Da-song's "trauma" from the previous night. It's a ludicrous way of describing having to cancel a camping trip especially in comparison to what the Kim family and their entire neighborhood went through at the same time. What struck me about the post-storm scene was their complete and total ignorance. If they knew about the flood, they would likely express sympathy (which doesn't actually help)... But it's not even on their radar. They honestly have zero idea what the lower class goes through. And without basic awareness of the other side, how can things ever hope to improve?...
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Nov 16, 2019 18:38
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Here’s another good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezwSfT7sXO0 The reflection with a line separating him from his rich self is brilliant Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 22:47
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That’s a good video (and great observation on the use of lines, I didn’t catch that) but he does contradict himself towards the end. The thesis seemed to be that Bong’s success stems from his understanding and use of the fundamentals of filmmaking, elevating genre fare to art film status simply by being a competent and consistent visual linguist. But then toward the end he says if you want your movie to have that arthouse feel, you need to go nuts and experiment with angles, composition, slo-mo etc...”at least you are doing something different.” It seems like he’s speaking to film students but that message is kinda the opposite of what you should be telling a film student, and the original message about understanding the fundamentals is much more important.
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Nov 16, 2019 23:41
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anyone who liked this should check out last year's very excellent Burning (streaming on netflix), my favorite from 2018, another south korean film centered around class-conflict, but more of a slow-burn mystery thriller it also ends with a rich dude getting stabbed to death for class resentments Wraith of J.O.I. fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 04:18
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Polo-Rican posted:What struck me about the post-storm scene was their complete and total ignorance. If they knew about the flood, they would likely express sympathy (which doesn't actually help)... But it's not even on their radar. They honestly have zero idea what the lower class goes through. And without basic awareness of the other side, how can things ever hope to improve?... It's a more nuanced and applicable take and even though many people walked away despairing, I think you could take from this film an essential humanity from every character and a framework to start thinking of how the world could be improved.
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Nov 17, 2019 18:50
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Such a great film! I work part time at a theatre showing it, and listening to the commentary of people as they leave has been infuriating. People are so bad at watching stuff, it's maddening. "That wasn't very sci-fi", says one. "I think the parasite... was society!" says another. "That ending came out of nowhere!" "I felt so bad for the wealthy family!" "I think they were dead the whole time!" ugh
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Nov 19, 2019 09:16
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Well, the person who said it wasn't very sci-fi was correct.
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Nov 19, 2019 10:49
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