Kicking off a week of Oscar coverage with the only film not in English to win Best Picture. There have only been 21 nominated films, the majority from the past 10 years, including U.S. films Minari and Letters From Iwo Jima. Parasite was (and still is) something special, a genre thriller that melds social commentary with its surprises and an turning point in the type of film the Academy likes to recognize. Usually the film with the strong original vision does no better than Best Screenplay. Bong Joon Ho isn’t even a filmmaker known for prestige. He usually combines Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Action and Comedy in the same story. Sometimes you get Memories of Murder and sometimes you get Mickey 17.
If you’re familiar with Bong’s work, you know the film is going to take some strange turns. You go in braced for it, perhaps try to figure it out. This one stays normal for a long time, an uncomfortable satire that’s a lighthearted home invasion. Then comes… the shot. It’s not the reveal, just an image that slaps you with its WTF-ery. From there, things quickly change gears. The film goes completely off the rails yet knows exactly what it’s doing. You might reach the end and long for how the first part was naturally playing out, but I think that was as far as it could go in that direction anyway. The reveal focused the theme of class struggle and created so much more to talk about in terms of the substance and the filmmaking.
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