The very first demon we meet in Berserk takes the form of a beautiful naked woman who lures men into sex with her so that she can transform into her true form and eat them alive. She is killed by Guts in the very first scene of the manga when she tries this on him and gets her brains blown out the back of her head with his Arm Cannon. Parasite: 7 brilliant scenes that have got under our skin. Now that the dust has settled following the 2020 Oscars, we can finally appreciate Bong Joon-ho's brilliant movie Parasite for what it is. When separated from the awards conversation, Bong's movie more than stands up as a razor-sharp, funny and fiendishly entertaining dissection of the.

• Parasite City All Death Scenes
• Parasite City All Death Scenes Photos

After its international success, Parasite (2019) became a cinematic phenomenon. Its witty script and craftsmanship are commendable, however Bong Joon Ho’s true win is how he smartly plays with symbols and allegories that say a lot about the modern Korean society.

Films such as Parasite (2019) – deep, and focused on conducting a vivisection of society – seldom need a bit of an explanation, or cultural context, in order to fully resonate with international audiences. Luckily for Bong Joon Ho, his satirical feature achieved a sublime success worldwide, guaranteed by the story’s universal narrative. But for those, who enjoy scavenging for gems hidden under the surface, Bong Joon Ho has plenty to offer.

In this article, I tried to elaborate on the most intriguing theories, facts and symbols, scattered along the exciting runtime of Parasite (2019).

The analysis of the social context in Parasite (2019)

One of the very first issues, touched by Bon Joon Ho in Parasite (2019), is how crucial it is to have connections or highly-valued credentials in South Korea. Early on in the film, Ki-woo (protagonist of the film) forges a uni degree, and as the family joins his grand life-winning scheme, they go to the moon and beyond in covering up their lies.

These mistruths reflect South Korea’s huge issue with access to well-paid jobs and securing fair chances to the youth. The government’s knees-deep in that bog, as nepotism and financial abuse has been leveraged by several well-situated politicians and governing officials. One such case was a scandal involving a former president of the country, who forced out changes to the scholarly admissions policy so that her daughter could enroll. So, iIf you ever wondered what corruption looks like, that’s a good example right there.

Given the bitter taste that the authorities leave – due to their demotivating actions – it’s no wonder Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019) met with a widely appreciative response domestically. Mid-class citizens feel the weight of unfairness, and this film writes an ode to their hardships. In South Korea, the poor remain hardly noticed, and the galling scandals involving the wealthy people, stir the pot more and more. That’s also visible in the way young people feel about their future. In a poll conducted in September last year in Korea, a saddening 23% of lower-to-middle-class youths (understood as people above 20 years old) admitted they expect their life to improve over time. Ki-woo and his sister Ki-jung represent that failing generation, left to figure out their career without a shot at proper education.

There’s more to Parasite (2019) and the Korean society though.

Parasite (2019) is also a take on the Marxism theory, and the economic clash between the poor and the rich. No matter how much the Kims try, they always remain marginalized and left on their own. Their misery is encapsulated by the short conversation between Ki-taek and Ki-woo, right after their house is flooded – Ki-woo, you know what plan never fails? No plan at all. You know why? If you make a plan, life never works out that way – says Ki-taek.

The “no plan” quote has more meaning than just summing up the lost battle of the Kims. On multiple occasions, Bong Joon Ho reassures the audience that, according to the poor, becoming rich always requires a neat plan, and that the rich never appreciate (and often don’t deserve) their wealth. When Ki-woo says that the forged degree is due in no-time, (as his dream is to get a proper education) Ki-taek instantly congratulates – so you do have a plan! Reading between the lines – Parasite (2019) indicates that poor people have, indeed, no plans, because that often requires even traces of financial capital or stability. Otherwise life is just panta rhei & carpe diem combined into one.

The meaning of the flood scene

When I first watched Parasite (2019), I was also flabbergasted by the flood scene. The sheer brilliance of it was the way it made a paramount example of just how class division works – when you’re poor, you have nothing to lean on, and no backup plan either. To put it simply – the rising water takes everything from the Kims, not only their home.

It also refers to the danger of being poor, the kind of constant unease and instability that the Parks are never exposed to. That’s the high ground they gain – in their up-in-the-clouds house, rain is the romantic sound, listened to from a cozy living room.

While I’m at it, the flooding itself is also no coincidence. It’s likely an allegory to a similar tragedy that took place in Seoul’s suburbs, Mangwon in the late 80s.

A window into the class division in South Korea

When Bong Joon Ho delves into the area of social inequality, he’s cautious about judgmentalism. In fact, the director prefers contrast as his emotional powerhouse. We never really learn what made the Parks so rich, and it’s only an impression that their social status creates a precedence to treat poorer people with disdain. To deepen the effect of the contrast between the two families, Bong Joon Ho shares details concerning Ki-taek and his various business ventures – from establishing a patisserie shop to being a driver for drunk people, an occupation widely known as daeri. The latter’s by no means a respected job, hence it perfectly fits the image of Ki-taek as a broken down loser, who’s miserably at peace with his own misfortune.

Fair employment and social status aren’t the only things separating the Kims and the Parks.

Their lives differ dramatically, just as the houses they live in or habits they develop. Bong Joon Ho confronts these two families by applying contrast to every aspect of their life. If you pay attention, you might notice how the colors get brighter when in the palatial house of the Parks. Even the camerawork is more patient, almost as if representing a keen architecture-lover, who examines every corner of the audacious interior. The camera studies this exquisite interior.

Contrast is also crucial in the carnage finale – with its psychedelic score in the background and overly luminous lighting, the birthday party seems almost unnatural. That’s how it’s viewed from the Kims’ perspective – it’s just too good to be true, that’s why it feels like a lucid dream.

Is Parasite (2019) based on a true story?

Bong Joon Ho was far from attaching any true story to his widely acclaimed film. While some sources mentioned that the director worked – at some point of his life – as a tutor working for a wealthy family, it’s nonetheless hardly imaginable that any of Parasite’s (2019) shenanigans were actually true.

Parasite City All Death Scenes

Still, as I mentioned in the part above, some parts of the film could be inspired by real events.

The city levels

Throughout the entire film, Bong Joon Ho sells the idea of floors used as a metaphor for the social disparities between the Parks and the Kims. That’s a smart way to use the city’s urban plan as a reflection of class divisions, but – before I carry on with praising it – let’s lay out the foundations of this theory.

Right from the opening scene, Bong Joon Ho emphasizes the importance of a basement-level flat where Kim family resides. By placing the camera on the pavement level, the director puts his audience in the shoes of the poor – that’s the way they see the outside world every day. The apartment is dark, cramped and makes an impression of a stinky place too. It’s not the coziest place to spend your days at.

With that view planted in our head, Bong moves on with the metaphor. When the two contradicting forces collide, Bong makes the border between very visible. It’s as if we could draw a two-dimensional blueprint of how the characters move upwards and downwards – inside the house, but also outside of it. As we climb all these levels, the intention of Bong Joon Ho becomes apparent, and his metaphor of up and above, almost hell and heaven, crystallizes.

Let’s look at a particular scene to grasp the idea.

After a pulse-rising sequence at night, when the Kims luckily manage to flee the house unnoticed, they ran down the city stairs. As they move downwards, the view turns uglier and more sewer-ish. By the time they arrive at their suburban dungeon, their flat is flooded and damaged beyond repair, and they’re left with nothing but a lie to sustain the next day. Bong explores the micro of the macro – the architecture floors and levels are used as social status representations. The lower they go, the darker the world gets.

Layers and floors reflect the class division, but they also help in setting the mood for particular scenes. The basement and the suburban flat are dark and unwelcoming, and that’s where most tragic events take place. In fact, I found the whole “secret basement motive” to be far more flabbergasting than anything else in the movie, for it’s a double-layered proof of that “levels and floors” concept.

How exactly?

Look who and how lives there. A man so withdrawn from normal life that he becomes a servant, not even an employee. And he lives in a basement rathole that derives from slasher movies and horrors, with its bleak greenish colors, and humidity that you can almost feel through the screen.

The constantly changing perspective

Before I started reading about perspective in films, I wasn’t aware of its impact. Despite watching dozens, and dozens of movies, this obvious characteristic never struck me as a universal lock-picking tool that often helps understand the intentions of the artist. However, perspective can often cause troubles too. Shuffling it can be hurtful for an unskilled filmmaker, yet luckily, Bong Joon Ho is not an unskilled filmmaker.

In Parasite (2019), any pottering around the perspective is barely noticeable. Like a driver who smoothly switches gears, Bong conducts his shifts seamlessly.

A vast part of the story is seen from the combined perspective of the Kims family. One after another, they execute the neat plan with outstanding precision, alas it’s obviously too perfect to be true. However, we mostly listen to their side of the story – how the father drowned financially after a few entrepreneurial misfires, or how their great scheme is born.

The perspective changes when Bong introduces the wealthy family of Parks. Their views bring the much-needed depth to Parasite’s (2019) social analysis, and that’s because the script allows them to tell their part without antagonizing them. This is vital to how both parties are perceived by the audience. As we sympathize with Kims – sneaky, cunning bastards who outsmart their rival – we’re also given a glimpse at Parks, who are snobbish rich people – yes, but snobbish rich people who vigorously accept their new employees. It’s never a one-sided, good-guys-bad-guys pattern.

This changing perspective provides essential information on the characters – how they feel, what they think. What later reveals the craft of Bong as a filmmaker is that he doesn’t need much time to do so.

In an example, Mr. Park values hard-working people, and respects Mr. Kim despite his flaws – being a chitter-chatter, and the sweat scent surrounding him. Furthermore, it’s likely that Mr. Park is far from a loving husband, what could possibly point to a very calculative, cold nature of the man. Some directors struggle with saying that much over an entire film, while Bong Joon Ho provides all of that information in just one scene.

Perspective comes in handy due to the genre mix too. In order to bring his favorite genre to the mashup – horror – Bong turns to child’s imagination. That scene works only because – for a brief moment – the South Korean director looks at the events from Parks’ kid’s perspective. A creepily smiling head, emerging from the darkness, wouldn’t work if it wasn’t shown in that specific way. It’s a detail, but one that reveals Bong’s astonishing wit as a storyteller. He knows when to switch gears, and walk in the shoes of a different character than the protagonist – even if that’s needed for one, short scene.

The ambiguous end – what really happened in Parasite’s (2019) final scene?

Dad, today I made a plan – a fundamental plan. I’m going to earn money, a lot of it. University, a career, marriage, those are all fine, but first I’ll earn money. When I have money, I’ll buy the house. On the day we move in, Mom and I will be in the yard. Because the sunshine is so nice there. All you’ll need to do is walk up the stairs. Take care until then. So long.

After the party-massacre dust settles, Ki-woo writes a letter, which he then sends to his father by using the Morse code. In a dreamy sequence, we get to see Ki-woo as a finely situated man himself, who purchases the very same house, as if only to reunite with his father. But that illusion quickly evaporates as Bong cuts to the flat, in a frame identical to the opening one.

Parasite City All Death Scenes Photos

It was all a dream, wasn’t it? Well, that’s what most people understood.

But knowing Bong, or even judging from the last two hours we’ve spend with him, that dream sequence could be a kind of sneaky foreshadowing. Hence the true question is that – does Bong leave any breadcrumbs that could lead us to thinking Ki-woo can actually make that money?

Sadly, I don’t think so.

That would be contradicting versus the subliminal message of Parasite (2019) – or one of them – that we make our own luck, and this luck has its limits. Now combine it with the paramount scene when Ki-woo asks his pupil/lover Park Da-hye if he fits the „rich people picture”. The Kim family was never meant to climb the ladder that high, and the fall had to be painful. As painful as the family’s separation, and the death of Kim Ki-jung.

Furthermore, Ki-woo is now less capable mentally capable, which lowers the chances of great wealth, if not crosses them out completely. That’s what Bong Joon Ho himself admitted, in an interview with Vulture; It’s quite cruel and sad, but I thought it was being real and honest with the audience. You know and I know — we all know that this kid isn’t going to be able to buy that house. I just felt that frankness was right for the film, even though it’s sad.

Did George Orwell and Nikolai Gogol inspire Parasite (2019) too?

While Bong Joon Ho didn’t mention any of these two writers as his inspirations, the themes present in Parasite (2019) are slightly related to the works of Gogol and Orwell. In fact, after doing some digging, I have found a few interesting references.

In his first novel ever entitled Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell wrote about the life of beggars and tatterdemalions in two major European cities. Through a series of recollections, which graphically painted the picture of just how miserable life can be down at the bottom, Orwell was still able to find happiness there. Moreover, the English writer explained that many of these no-income people were actually very creative and their status was – quite often – a result of an overwhelming laziness.

Does it ring a bell?

It should, because that’s what the Kim family represents too. Instead of slowly accumulating financial capital through a decent job, they’re on a lookout for a shortcut. They are also lazy, and that laziness keeps them anchored to the low-income profile. Moreover, they are well-used to this kind of life, although crave to move up the ladder.

In terms of structure, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019) has somehow similar tones to The Overcoat, a milestone novel for the Russian literature by Nikolai Gogol. The writing style of Gogol, known as skaz, blossomed with a range of emotions, often boldly mixing tragedy and comedy together. While The Overcoat and Parasite (2019) aren’t too close thematically – the Russian novel is a bitter satire about social alienation and servitude – Bong’s rich narrative canvas bears some similarity to Gogol’s. The director implements contrast in most surprising places and uses a simple story that elaborates on the society and people’s behavior.

Other details that make Parasite (2019) awesome

• Ki’taek’s wife – Kim Chung-sook – is most likely a former athlete. It’s hinted in the house flood scene, when Ki-taek picks up a frame with a silver medal. It’s a proof that she used to be a hammer thrower in her earlier days.

• The “avaricious” interior design of the Parks’ house was designed by Lee Ha Jun, and it incorporated works of several Korean artists, including carpenters, painters and designers.
• When talking to Vanity Fair, Bong admitted that Alfred Hitchcock’s opus magnum inspired the film too. The theme that caught the attention of the South Korean filmmakers was… the Bates house. To be precise, it’s the stairs and its interior, which made Bong Joon Ho rewatch Psycho (1960) several times.

Summing up the analysis of Parasite (2019)

When it comes to films as rich thematically as Parasite (2019), one can find layer after layer. Even every consecutive screening could possibly reveal a new detail. I strongly encourage you to share your own views and interpretations or question mine. And if you like this kind of analysis, head over here and read a similar symbolism overview of Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019). And a few more articles about Parasite (2019):

Resources used in the article:

• The Economist article
• Vanity Fair interview
• Vulture – Parasite ending analysis
• Jacobinmag – article about Korean neoliberalism
• Hani.co.kr – report on the happiness of Koreans
• Interview with Parasite’s production designer

Let me know which movie should I analyzed next! Write a comment below!

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This article reveals the explained plot and the detailed events in Bong Joon-ho’s movie Parasite, revealing its meaning, symbols and storyline. We recommend you to read it only after watching the movie, and not before, in order to preserve the pleasure of the first vision.

In order to understand the beauty of Parasite, the film by Bong Joon-ho winner of the Academy Award as best movie in 2020, it is enough to think about “a drizzle, and all this rain and drizzle is building up—and when it reaches the suspenseful height, the tempo should feel like a typhoon”. This is how the author wanted to describe the storyline: Parasite begins with a very light tone, but almost immediately it digs his claws into the flesh of social satire, he surfaces a black humor dark like the night, bringing the spectator into this strange surreal comedy mood and then, more or less in the middle of the movie, it suddenly turns into a thriller with horror tints, it momentarily goes tragedy and indulges in a grotesque, memorable and bitter ending.

Difficult, if not impossible, to classify it. After two American co-productions, the black sci-fi fairy tales of Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017), born from the success of the dazzling Memories of Murder (2003) and The Host (2006), Bong returns to his homeland to carry out an entirely personal project, which initially could have turned into a drama: like the director’s previous Hollywood films, Parasite is also in a certain sense a fairy tale, full of symbols and metaphors, but this time the director’s maturity and his wise and elegant use of the mean allow to achieve a result that makes the two, albeit excellent, predecessors turn pale.

The plot

The Seul of Parasite follows a very long tradition that starts from Metropolis and continues with infinite variations to the present day: it is populated by very poor people in its slums while the rich are at higher levels, far from the dirt, far from the stench and, above all, apparently far from problems and pain. The Kim family, father, mother, son and daughter little more than teenagers, is a family of poor people among the poor people: they live in a basement (therefore below the lower streets), forced into spaces so tight that it’s impossible to get up or move quickly without risking hitting your head on an edge or a shelf, they communicate with the outside world through WhatsApp (but only when they can steal the wi-fi signal from some neighbours, because in that street there are still poor people, a little more wealthy, who have a connection), they live with small, underpaid chores, they don’t have the money to pay a decent disinfection for cockroaches (the initial scene of the “free disinfection”, where they risk to die intoxicated too, is memorable) and, icing on the cake, every time they are all gathered together to eat, a drunk man urinates on their window.

Everything that surrounds the Kim family is unsteady and unstable like their lives. This family, which is anything but Dickensian in its poverty (indeed, from the beginning we understand that the Kims are very well disposed towards the art of scam), will find themselves by a pure coincidence of destiny to come into direct contact with the Park family, the same in composition (father, mother, daughter and son) and completely different in terms of income. The pattern of this first part is already widely tested by a century of comedy in the cinema, with the poor man introducing himself into the home and life of the rich man. With a perfect narrative trick, the young man of the Kim family, Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi), receives a possibility of employment thanks to a friend who recommends him as an English teacher for the private lessons of the young girl of the Park family (Ji-so Jung). The boy is enthusiastic about the idea: he gets a fake certificate of participation at the university prepared by his sister Ki-jung (So-dam Park), very skilled in this kind of thing (“if there was a degree in falsification of documents you she would take it with praise!”, her father proudly states) and shows up at the Park house pretending to be a promising university student.

Here the first sensational detachment of the film is felt: the Park residence is an immense design villa with a large garden, minimalist style, made of large spaces, wood and immense windows, a luxury that the young boy never has seen in his life. This is the hilarious portion of the film: the young Ki-woo is immediately accepted as a teacher by the naive and sensitive mother of the family (Yeo-jeong Jo) and by the girl, who has a crush on him, and in the meantime he immediately senses that in that house there is space and work for his entire family: his sister quickly and furiously invents an important background of artistic and psychological studies and immediately becomes the new art teacher of the “prodigy child”, very spoiled, of the family (Hyun-jun Jung); with a diabolical trick (the girl leaves her underwear in the car) the two kids manage to get the family driver fired and to have their father Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song, Bong’s fetish actor) take his place, but the worst comes with the poor housekeeper Moon-gwang (Jeong-eun Lee). Taking advantage of the woman’s terrible peach allergy, the three members of the Kim family manage to convince the wife that Moon-gwang is seriously ill with tuberculosis, causing her to be fired with an excuse and getting their mother and wife to take over.

The gigantic Park house has no cockroach problems like the tiny Kim house, but now it also has a serious problem with parasites: the four scammers, proud to all have a generous salary thanks to their deception, are ready to enjoy the good life in the Park house every time the owners are out.

Even the most perfect plans, however, can always be victims of the unexpected, of an agent of chaos that suddenly manifests itself and against which nothing can be done. The agent of the chaos of Parasite is Moon-gwang, who suddenly reappears in the house, while the Parks are away and the “parasites” are partying: in the villa’s fallout bunker, of which nobody is aware except her, Moon-gwang has in fact been hiding her husband Geun-se (Myeong-hoon Park) for more than four years, trying to escape from some ruthless creditors.

The discovery of Moon-gwang’s secret marks the transition from satire to high voltage thriller, which takes place in a matter of seconds with a totally unexpected and unsettling change of style: in a continuous exchange of roles, the Kim family and the other pair of squatters continually pass from victims to executioners depending on whether they are in a position of strength or weakness, in what is one of the most convincing representations of the concept of war between the poor seen in recent years. When Kim’s mother Chung-sook (Hyae Jin Chang) is still in an advantageous position, she treats Moon-gwang, servile to him, as a criminal to be arrested, while when the situation turns upside down and the Kim’s secret is revealed, it’s Moon-gwang to mistreat the “rival” family, forcing them to kneel and keep their arms raised as she performs the intimidating imitation of a North Korean news program (the compromising video is compared to a nuclear missile by the dictator Kim Jong-un).

A violent brawl between the two families and the unexpected return of the Park family leads the Kims to miraculously get the best out of the situation: Moon-gwang (who suffers a head injury that will be fatal shortly after) and her husband are locked up in the bunker, while the father and the two boys Kim manage to hide in the house without being discovered by the owners (but constantly risking, with levels of tension and suspense comparable to Hitchcock’s best movies). It’s during these scenes that we discover the rotten face of the Park family, when the two spouses discuss the stench emitted by the Kims, during a sexual foreplay, without knowing that their employees are hidden a few centimeters from them.

Having escaped the danger, however, another drama arrives, which opens the tragic segment of the film: the rains that hit Seoul have become torrential and the home of the Kims (meanwhile escaped from the villa) is completely unusable. Displaced, refugees in a gym, the Kims are called the next day for an extra day of work at the Park house, because the owners want to celebrate the birthday of the little Da-song in style, totally heedless of the tragedy that occurred at the low levels of the city. Still fresh from the trauma related to the humiliations they had suffered the night before, the Kims return to work at the Park home, with Ki-woo determined to go down to the bunker to get rid of Moon-gwang (he doesn’t know that she’s dead already) and her husband.

Geun-se, however, went mad with grief after the death of his wife: after having managed to knock Ki-woo down, with the same stone that the boy brought the day before (beautiful, among other things, the shot in which the the young man’s blood mixes with plum juice), the man re-emerges from the darkness in which he had been confined for years, while the Parks celebrate Da-song’s birthday in the garden with some very rich friends, stabbing Ki-jung and being killed in turn in the scuffle with the girl’s mother. Shocked by the sight of his children’s condition and disgusted by the reaction of the family man Park (Sun-kyun Lee, who continues to be disgusted by the smell of the poor even in such a tragic moment), Ki-taek kills with a stab in the heart his employer, and immediately after he flees and takes refuge, irony of fate, right in the bunker of the Park house (turning himself into the copy of the man who ruined his life and plans).

After this delusional final massacre, the film ends with the exit from coma of Ki-woo (who, due to the head injury, has an uncontrollable laugh similar to Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, the other big candidate as best movie in 2020 Academy Awards). After having left behind the legal problems due to the colossal scam of which he was the architect, he manages to get in touch with his father still hidden in the bunker, thanks to morse communication, and begins to fantasize about becoming very rich, in order to buy that house and free him.

The interpretation and the meaning of the movie

If in the end the story of Parasite can appear very simple in its scheme (a comedy-like misunderstanding that turns into tragedy without ever losing the satirical component) and in the perfectly linear plot. What strikes is the construction of the characters and, first of all, the mastery with which Bong manages both to direct the actors and to stage everything: with the excellent use of both space (the direction in the scenes in the Kims’ house and the scenes in the Parks’ house are so much different that it seems to watch two different films) and time (the aforementioned tension scenes, the passages from one genre to another), the director manages to keep our eyes glued to the screen from the beginning to the end.

There is not a single truly positive character and everyone plays a role, from Ki-woo who breaks the promise made to a friend and plans to marry the daughter of the Parks without ever revealing his true identity, to the Park spouses, who await the middle of the night to reveal to themselves what they really are (emblematic the wife’s desire for cocaine, while she’s scandalized by drugs during the day): each of them wears a mask to show what the social condition requires him/her to be. Co-protagonist of the whole story is the house full of mysteries of the Parks, created from scratch by the scenographers, in which the director’s eye moves sinuously, trying to use as little as possible the cuts, to give us the impression of being inside the house, together with the characters that populate it.

With his chilling parody of the obsession for social mobility, Bong wins both at Cannes and at the Academy Awards and Parasite immediately became one of the most acclaimed movies of in recent years, yet another triumph of South Korean cinema, increasingly present, important and successful also in the western market. A film whose success could lead to a greater presence of oriental cinema in theaters, already destined to become an instant classic of our times.