‘Happy global audiences respond to Parasite’
Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho has said that his film Parasite’s “biggest pleasure and the most significant meaning” to him is that it succeeded even though audiences might feel uncomfortable with its explicit description of bitter wealth disparity in modern society.
Bong’s dark comic thriller, about two families on the opposite ends of South Korea’s social spectrum, has made history. It won best picture at this month’s 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, becoming the first non-English-language film to get the top honour. Bong and his film clinched three other Oscars.
Bong said that the movie’s story has not only “funny, comic” elements but also “bitter, painful nature” of the disparity between the haves and have-nots in modern society. “I didn’t want to avoid such a part even a bit,” Bong told a nationally televised news conference.
“Audiences might hate that or feel uncomfortable to watch it ... but I thought the only option I can have for this movie is depicting the world we live as frankly as possible, though that might be risky commercially.”
Noting that Parasite was already commercially successful in North America, France, Vietnam, Japan, the United Kingdom and his native South Korea, even before his Oscar triumph, Bong said, “Regardless of the (Oscar) wins, the biggest pleasure and the most significant meaning was the fact that many audiences around the world of our times respond to the movie.”
The class satire tells the story of how a family of four poor and unemployed people,
living in a slum basement apartment, comically infiltrates a wealthy family residing in a luxurious mansion before things unravel violently and tragically.
Bong had commercial and critical success with his 2013 sci-fi film Snowpiercer, which starred Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, along with South Korean actor Song Kang-ho. But nothing has been remotely as successful as Parasite. The movie, also the first South Korean film to win an Oscar, made Bong a national hero. AP