I had the great pleasure of watching Parasite by Bong Joon Ho at the Landmark last night with my cousin. Of his previous films I’ve seen The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja while my cousin had seen his 2003 film Memories of Murder (as well as Okja, but not the others). So, we had an interesting and varied view on Ho’s work and style. Personally, I had always seen him as a tonally unique genre-bender who got into crazy world-building (chemical monster, apocalyptic future, apocalyptic nearer-future) to comment on society. But having seen Parasite I can now say he is much more than that – having wrought a story that Hitchcock would be proud of, to say the least. I’ll try not to get too spoiler-y about the film since it is recently released, but I will say that this is a film absolutely best enjoyed if you go in knowing nothing. So do yourself a favor and don’t read on if you haven’t seen it yet.
All I’ll concretely say about the movie is that it’s a seemingly straightforward story about a poor family trying to swindle their way into all being hired by a rich family. And then things turn southwards as they’re want to do. I was delightfully and frightfully surprised, especially going into the second half of the movie, practically every ten minutes. Ho seamlessly brings the story from dry comedy to absurd comedy to thriller to horror and then to something else entirely. He was an auteur to me before I saw this film, but of a certain niche and style. I can now say that Ho is an auteur of a more universal quality. By universal quality, I mean that his scenes and story and choices can pretty much be emotionally accessed by anyone – and yet he strikes at the core of an idea, or a facet of society, that no one has examined in the way he has.
But to add yet another category of auteur to this rant, I’ll label Boon Jong Ho an “architect auteur”. Other filmmakers in this totally made up category are Michael Haneke, Yorgos Lanthimos, Lynne Ramsay, Robert Bresson to an extent. All these creators are auteurs because they create their own visual style, their own world mechanics, and tell distinct narratives. But to me they are architects because they value a concerted thesis at the core of their films above all else. Whatever that thesis statement is, invariably about society or human nature, their entire film grows from that point – for the sake of building to make that point. And strangely, miraculously even, their dialogue and style specifically break rules meant to keep the audience interested – all in the name their thesis. Their films can be bare, essential, totally unrealistic, awkward, jarring, and almost never “comforting” – but they have a point, and they prove their point logically, intellectually and emotionally.
I guess what set me down this line of thought in the first place was the dialogue in Parasite. I found myself thinking that the dialogue was never “great” – it certainly wasn’t bad, but it didn’t have much flair or shock built into the style of the conversations themselves. What’s more, the dialogue had a slightly comedic, stilted, and silly tone to it (most of the time). It felt like a way more subtle and grounded cousin to Lanthimos’ films – which are so detached from humanity it becomes instantly absurd. Haneke’s come to mind too – a certain serious sterility that forces you to really look at what the characters are saying and why, rather than be distracted by innate empathy to people in (usually) dire circumstances.
Each scene builds towards a point Ho is making, several points really. And sometimes the dialogue feels repetitive, or downright boring, but his filmmaking is so brilliant that you set it aside in the moment, still rapt in the overall momentum of the story. But then, when the truly insane turns of the plot come to pass – you realize the point of those scenes from before, the ones that trained your eye to something other than the conversation, were just as essential to the climax as anything. To me, the architect auteur has an unabashed intent to design the story to their ultimate purpose and will bravely pursue it with choices that may make their story seem pared away or sub-optimal. But just as they are training your eye to see what they want you to see, and how to see it—they are also training your mind to learn their sense of logic, their private way of looking at the world. And with Parasite, Ho leaves you looking at the stratified structure of modern society through his lens. And it is shocking, true, and brilliantly entertaining all at once.