Films·Nov 10, 2019

Parasite

2019 South Korean film by Bong Joon Ho.

Metadata

Director	Bong Joon Ho
Year	2019
Writer	Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin-won
Stars	Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong

Summary: Parasite follows the poor Kim family as they cleverly infiltrate the wealthy Park household by posing as unrelated, highly qualified workers. At first, the setup plays almost like a dark comedy about social climbing and survival. But as hidden spaces and buried tensions are revealed, the film turns into something much more violent and tragic.
Overall theme: The movie is about class inequality, but not in a simple “rich bad, poor good” way. Bong Joon-ho shows how poverty forces people into competition with one another while wealth creates distance, comfort, and blindness. Its sharpest idea is that the system makes everyone dependent on everyone else, while still keeping them separated by invisible walls.
Cinematography style: The cinematography is clean, controlled, and deeply architectural. The Park house is shot with open space, glass, stairs, and clean lines, while the Kim family’s semi-basement feels cramped, low, and crowded. Bong uses vertical movement — going up into wealth and down into poverty — so the visual design itself becomes part of the class story.