The 50 best films of 2019 in the US: No 1 – Parasite
It may be the most prestigious award in world cinema, but Cannes Palme d’Or winners do not always inspire universal agreement among film critics, much less between critics and the general public: often even jury selections that are rapturously received in elevated festival environs (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, say, or Winter Sleep) cause barely a ripple once they hit cinemas.
Bong Joon-ho’s scorching class-war comedy Parasite, however, has been a little different: the film landed in the last days of Cannes with an echoing bang, scoring breathless reviews and becoming a frontrunner for the Palme, which Alejandro González Iñárritu’s jury unanimously gave it. Then something unusual happened: the festival noise didn’t let up, instead transferring to the internet and escalating to a rambunctious roar. Young fans on Twitter christened themselves the #BongHive, while the film generated as many playful memes as it did brow-furrowed think pieces. So far, the film has grossed $117m (£87m) worldwide, and counting – a remarkable sum for a South Korean auteur piece that’s as dark and pungent as squid ink, with lashings of violence outdone only by its social commentary for sheer severity.
What’s behind this crossover phenomenon? Well, it’s a universal passion rooted in universal rage. Parasite’s wicked allegory for the battle between the haves and have-nots for power and space – culminating in the most literal but exquisitely pointed upstairs-downstairs dynamic imaginable – struck a chord at home, where the Korean ruling class is still firmly entrenched. Yet Bong’s hierarchy-scrambling story of an impoverished family role-playing their way into comfortable employment by the other half – before having their strategy upended from an unexpected point on the ladder – has resonated with exasperated 99-percent-ers around the world.
It’s an alternative home-invasion thriller with hidden layers and cellars of socioeconomic conflict, chiming with a strain of underclass protest rumbling through cinema as disparate as Jordan Peele’s Us, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You in 2019. That wouldn’t count for much, however, if Parasite weren’t also such a ride: an art film with a populist showman’s flair for drama and working the crowd. A lot has been said about the “twists” in Bong’s narrative, though they aren’t the kinds of corkscrew trickery seen in M Night Shyamalan films. Rather, it is perfectly stacked, poised plotting of the type we’ve become less used to seeing in mainstream entertainment, each turn deepening the human stakes rather than merely shifting them.
Bong has shown us his gifts as an entertainer before, in zesty genre excursions as extravagantly delirious as The Host and Snowpiercer, or as brooding and gradually startling as Memories of Murder and Mother. Parasite exquisitely marries his two sides as a storyteller to make his greatest film: a raucous, bang-up romp that isn’t shy to catch you mid-laugh (or mid-shriek) with bottomless, bleeding human pain and fury.