If Parasite were a sitcom, it would be the episode of Night Court where it's revealed Dan Fielding doesn't actually have a law degree while a blissfully unaware Judge Harry doesn't even notice Selma's has tuberculosis and has been replaced by Roz. Finally all hell breaks loose when Bull bursts out from the basement and goes on stabbing spree wounding Mac and killing Mel Torme. Some shows weren't afraid to tackle class struggle back then.
You know it's good but is it the episode of Night Court where a cult thinks Bull is God good?
My point is: Sitcoms were usually written using "the big lie" formula; a little white lie escalates and spirals out of control and inevitably comes crashing down. Lesson learned. This is so ingrained in storytelling that's where instinctively thought the narrative was headed in Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. Nope. Parasite is not nearly that simple it's probably the most morally complex and surprising character study you'll ever see on film. Sure you know it's good but is it the episode of Night Court where a cult thinks Bull is God good? (Bangs gavel)
Early on you're introduced to the Kim Ki-woo and his family- four people living in such squalor, a man regularly urinates on their cramped apartment and it makes no difference. Surely they must be the "good guys", right? There must be some nobility in poverty. Not so fast, this film isn't going to give you any easy answers. Other than if they could just fold a fucking pizza box, there would have been less stabbing but that's another story.
Meanwhile The Park family is in every way a contrast; an overpaid architect's wife living in opulence and convinced their spazzy kid is talented for some reason. The Parks are materialistic, self-absorbed, gullible and out of touch with the rest of the world. Yea they're hard to like BUT - the poor people? The Kim's are fucking sociopaths. This is far from a "rich people bad/poor people good" narrative even good films use as a crutch. (looking at you, Joker!)
When I saw how calculating and callously Ki-jung gets the Mr. Park's driver fired (ahhh, the old panty placement. Saw it on Murder, She Wrote) and how Mr. Kim congratulates Ki-woo on successfully bullshitting his way into the Park's family via forged documents, the layers are peeled back, one-by-one and your allegiances shift. I kept waiting for someone, probably Mr. Kim to stand up and say, "Okay this has gone too far..." but none of the characters can find a moral center, or even trying to do so - what could possibly go wrong?
It already succeeds as a black comedy, like a deeper Down and Out in Beverly Hills but the third just blows the fuck up and eventually into a violent melee leaving a mess behind with so many layers you can't say definitively who's the parasite and who is the host. I don't know how to end this so: If you don't see this, you're an asshole.
The bad:
Weird smell in the theater, like corn chips and goat.
Fun Fact: The man who created Night Court was named Reinhold Weege and the show was about a judge. Judge Reinhold? Coincidence?
