Master of paradox

Bong Joon Ho’s film centres on lovable con artists

Korean director Bong Joon Ho is one slippery filmmaker.

His movies often balance on a knife-edge between comedy and tragedy; think of serious themes like animal rights (in 2017’s Okja) and class warfare (2013’s Snowpiercer) undercut by goofball moments, often delivered by Tilda Swinton. Not to mention the oddity of a giant semi-sentient pig and a non-stop round-the-world train as the central elements in those films.

So it is with Parasite, a comedy (mostly) in which an impoverished Korean family manages to worm its way into the hearts, home and wallets of a wealthier, less streetsmart clan. After university-age son Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi) talks his way into the job of an English tutor for their daughter, he recommends his sister as an art therapist, his dad as a driver and his mom as a housekeeper — all while hiding the fact that they’re related.

Bong is clearly enjoying the paradoxes that play out in the film.

“This family ends up committing a crime,” he says through his translator.

“They’re all con men. But at the same time, as the audience you can’t really hate them. And I think this is really important. They’re pretending to be someone else; they’re acting. But at the same time they’re kind of adorable in the way they do that.”

That pretence is crucial to unpacking the movie. “There’s a key word that’s repeated in the film, which is ‘pretend.’ Even when the son is tutoring the high schoolgirl and she has to write English sentences she has to use the word ‘pretend.’ In the middle you see the son directing the dad’s acting, and they’re all very good actors. So it’s like acting within acting. That’s the core, charming aspect of this family.”

As for how he coaxed those layers of make-believe from his cast: “I think the key to good directing for actors is a good script, which I write myself. If you have a good description and good dialogue, 90 per cent of the directing work is already done.”

It also helps to be back in his native land and language. Okja was shot mostly in the Czech Republic, and Snowpiercer circled the globe for its locations, but those movies were also largely in English.

“It was great to work with actors without a translator,” Bong confirms. “But it also felt great that I came back to films of this size.” Okja and Snowpiercer had budgets of close to $50 million, while Parasite was made for $11 million, in line with his earlier work. “That’s the scale that suits me as a filmmaker.”

Parasite doesn’t fit neatly into a genre category; it’s a comedy-drama, but as the plot progresses there are elements of a thriller, and not a little violence. At its première in Cannes, it played on the same day as Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood, which made for a heady double bill.

“Of course there is this explosive moment at the end, and it may seem sudden on the surface,” Bong says. “But the reasons and the emotions leading up to it were gradually built upon during the two hours of the film ... It’s a very faithful and necessary moment.”

And it turns out the director can be as duplicitous as his characters when necessary. During the Cannes festival, stories circulated about the battles Bong waged against Harvey Weinstein in 2012, when the producer wanted to cut 25 minutes out of Snowpiercer for its American release.

One shot that earned Weinstein’s ire involved a guard gutting a fish to frighten a group of rebels. Harvey wanted it gone. Bong impulsively told him that the scene had a deep personal meaning, since his father had been a fisherman. Weinstein backed off. But the truth is that Bong’s father was a graphic designer.

The director now refers to the whole crazy episode with Weinstein as “like a black comedy.” Life imitates art.