Parasite: A Cinematic Monument For The Ages

Luke Johansen
Dec 22, 2024
5 min read

Parasite - noun: an organism living in, on, or with another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host.

As I'm sitting down to write this article, I'm legitimately struggling to find the words to portray how Bong-Joon Ho's best-picture-winning Parasite affected my perception of cinema. Masterpiece would probably suffice for most, but we as a collective culture, myself included, are guilty of overusing that phrase to the point where it's lost most of its relevancy. This puts me in a hard position. I want to convey to you exactly how much Parasite accomplishes, but I'm at a loss for effective-enough words on how to do it. A cinematic monument for the ages. Yes, that's how I'll do it. At least that's how I'll try, because that phrasing may still not be enough. And I know that I've highly praised a lot of other movies on this site. Maybe it's because I'm just trying to make up for not watching as many movies growing up, as books had been my preferred storytelling medium in adolescence. Or of course, it could be because Parasite is really just that good. I can count on one hand the number of times I've walked out of a movie thinking to myself is this the best movie I've ever seen? I wondered that when I first saw The Godfather. The thought occurred to me upon my first viewing of Oppenheimer. And now it's unexpectedly back after my first time watching Parasite. In fact, 24 hours after finishing the movie, it hasn't gone anywhere. To put it abstractly, every last detail of this movie's construction is intimately crafted to matter in some abstract yet immediately apparent way, every last move it makes carefully and patiently calculated to effectively and smartly shock, surprise, and carry us, the audience, to a breathtaking conclusion. I believe that this movie certainly deserves the level of consideration that movies like Oppenheimer and especially The Godfather get, and I hope by the time this article is through, you'll understand why.

Parasite is a 2019 Korean-language satirical thriller from director Bong Joon-Ho that follows the poor Kim family as they slowly and methodically infiltrate the life of the wealthy Park family, setting into motion an unprecedented and ultimately sinister series of events.

Firstly, this film trusts its expertly crafted characterization enough to make it the focus of an entire movie, and I respect this film for doing this. On one hand, this approach is too rare a commodity in movies these days, and on the other, the writing of the characters in Parasite is just marvelous, and it made for a wonderfully complete centerpiece to the film. The pacing gives us ample time to get comfortable with the members of the two highlighted families without ever growing stagnant in any way, and sticks with an effective and even intimate approach at times, letting us just get acclimated to the general tone of the world these characters inhabit before flipping what we've learned about these worlds on it's head in alarmingly effective ways. Assisting this impressive command of character and pace is remarkably intelligent camera work from Hong Kyung-pyo, a cinematographer based out of South Korea who has worked on a bunch of films from the region, as well as the more globally well-known Snowpiercer, also directed by Joon-Ho. Kyung-pyo's image uses especially the sharp, harsh architecture of the Park's lavish home as well as the Kim's less impressive one to great effect, utilizing a lot of straight lines to make remarkable use of a relatively common technique in the filmmaking business known as show don't tell, a pretty self-explanatory concept. In that same vein, the visual storytelling of Parasite could be the best I've ever seen in any film, and one of my favorite things about it is its commitment to using a collection of recurring visual cues in unspeakably effective ways. Understated techniques such as this one are what the film primarily uses to achieve its fundamentally unsettling tone, one of my favorite things about it. Parasite is creepy in expertly understated ways that are actively changing my views on how and why thriller movies work or don't work. The devil's in the details of this movie, and speaking of which, the details of Parasite are also incredibly fleshed-out and given appropriate amounts of screen time in ways that nevertheless play second fiddle to the film's overarching narrative. This level of attention to detail came way out of left field to pleasantly surprise me in some pretty profound ways. Oh, and the memory of Parasite is also incredible, and a lot of the recurring visual elements of this film just add that many more layers to the picture as a whole.

The third-act revelations of Parasite are startling and effective, and Joon-Ho pulls off what is without a doubt the best and most insane tonal shift I've ever seen in a movie. I wrote in my notebook while watching the film that it went from feeling like Minari to something resembling 10 Cloverfield Lane real fast, and I'm personally pretty proud of that quip. The "I get it moment" of Parasite is rattlingly effective in ways that really get under your skin, and as I also wrote down while watching the film, "just nuts." In addition, I appreciate Jong-Ho's intentionally assured pacing. He's not in a rush to get to his impressive big reveals, and just kind of lets everything happen in ways that feel intellectually honest and structurally upright. Assisting these well-played revelations is a remarkably consistent and effective thread of audio-visual contrast between the quiet, clean wealthy world and the loud, dirty poor one. All of these articulately crafted elements come to a shocking and shockingly violent head at the climax of the film, a brutal payoff to the previous two acts of unease and discovery. In short, the climax of this film is some of the most effective cinema I've seen in my entire life.

So, is Parasite my new greatest movie I've ever seen? After sitting on this idea for the last twenty-four hours, I think it might very well be. Every aspect of this film, down to the details, is fine-tuned to portray a powerful story of greed and desperation. Politics-obsessed journalists can feel free to continue to hem and haw about this movie's themes and how it's a "scathing critique of capitalism," and that's fine by me if they don't want or don't know how to say anything of substance about the actual structural aspects of this movie, and I say that regardless of how I feel about the various economic systems of the world. Whatever floats their boat. I'm personally more impressed by this film's measurable aspects. I love its attention to detail. I love its characterization. I love its ridiculously intelligent production design. I love its twisting, turning, and intentional plot. I love its mystery. I love its revelations. I love how put-together and well-constructed it is. I also give it bonus points for having a vision, because this movie's originality is just the cherry on top of it all. Parasite is truly a powerhouse of cinema, and I don't think it's inappropriate in the slightest for me to place it among the all-time greats. And if you consider yourself a member of the "general audience" demographic, maybe you think that Parasite is too artsy-fartsy a movie for you to get involved in or enjoy. I must admit that learning how to critique movies like a professional does suck a lot of the joy out of watching them. But this line of study does have its moments, rare as they may be, and I've found that when I watch a movie that's truly great, I enjoy it more than I otherwise would have because I understand what about it makes it so great.