Reviews

Mr Sudhangshu Gupta is a respected officer in his late 30s. He is widowed a few years back after his wife attempts a suicide. He has moved on and is going to marry for the second time with a woman she met on a trip, Miss Soma. On a parallel frame the movie unveils a man, who has minutely worked out a plan to showcase that Gupta's wife is still alive and had come back searching for him. He has set people all around Mr Gupta, he even managed to set Gupta's personal servant to his side and thus acquires access to his private belongings. When everything is planned ingeniously, on the day of Gupta's second marriage, Karanjakkho Samadder the mastermind of this whole conspiracy sends a woman(dressed as Gupta's undead wife) to their ceremony. A scene is created and the marriage comes ar a halt. In the following days the matter goes into court, the accusing party(undead wife of Mr Gupta) holds a number of proofs, while the defending party nullifies them. A paradox of evidence is created and slowly the accusing party finds a better of them to a certain point where it will be so promising to the viewers (of the movie) that one can believe the accusing party to be true, although the parallel sequence of the movie will not let you be sure. As the case goes on being more and more complicating and confusing the movie will reach its climax, at this point out of nowhere a twist comes that will rewrite the character build up of the protagonist and with that everything will fall in place and the cloud of confusion will slowly unveil.

In summarisation the storyline is extremely well done and every details are kept in mind. This is a well established and executed thriller, although the storyline isn't a continuous rising one, but more of a slow pace continued with a sudden climax that reveals the twist. As per acting goes, there's no doubt its executed perfectly, although I'll say some characters are framed more in a comical way keeping in mind its commercial side. Talking of commercial side, it will be better to say this movie is one such, camera angles, scene progression are very evidently commercial. I suggest every thriller lover to watch this movie, it's made in the early 1960s and thus it's not that much engaging and ornamental to the eyes, but if one catches on the storyline with utter interrest, I'm sure he/she will love it.

The movie parasite has many aspects to look for. It shows a new way to perceive you everytime you see it. But maybe the most relavant aspects is of it's political perspective. The movie throwout its storyline shows a series of scenes and act that portrays modern day society. In present times it's noteworthy that the differences of classes is real, and with time the difference of class is growing more and more. Capitalism has rooted it's way into almost everything and anything.The whole movie meaningfully describes two properties of capitalism, rather specifically neoliberal capitalism, these are "Cool Capitalism" and "Cultural Hegemony".

The former is stated by Jim Mcguigan in his "The coolness of capitalism today". It describes the way the rich are unaware or rather ignorant about the actual condition of the society and that about the condition of the not so privileged. In the movie, there's a scene where Mr. Kim is driving, and in the backseat there's Mrs Park, who says yesterday's night was a pleasant one, in a parallel scene one can see the devastation on the poor. Another example is in the same scene where Mrs Park says there's a bad smell, and this increaes as the movie goes on. Mary Douglass states "There's no things as absolute dirt, it exists in the eyes of the beholder", i.e its a social sature that is used to prove someone lesser than someone else. This part shows how the rich are unaware of the cost or labour given for their privileges by people who are below them in this capitalist society. This sums up as a fact that the people benifited by this capitalist system often distance themselves from the have nots both metaphorically and physically. They don't want to smell anything that will remind them of poverty or maybe on which they are feeding.

The effects of late capitalism is the ever growing distance between the rich and the poor even in aspect of culture and lifestyle. Antonio Gramsci calls this as the Cultural Hegemony. Throwout the movie Mr. Park describes about a line that he always keeps and loves to kept by any of his employees between him and them. He describes this as "professionalism" but what this actually means is that he cuts out a division to maintain his status of supiority. Cultural hegemony which favours the rulling class, always teaches to aspire the supirior. This can be seen in present day advertisement, and how everyone wants to acquire the dominant status. The same is portrayed in the movie by the scene where the poor family gets a chance to live in the Park house and enjoys themselves as the rich.

The very end of the movie shows us a scene where Ki-woo has earned enough money to buy the rich house and afterall free his father, however this momentary happiness is dissolved as its reveiled that it was just as aspiration made by boy in a letter to his father. Furthermore in an interview Bong Joon-ho says keeping in mind the family's economic condition, it would take 564 year to buy that house. This is contrary to the idea of capitalism in America that "A little hardwork can get you anything you want to achieve", although the reality is that the rich gets richer in an illusion of social mobility. In the end part of the movie, after all the horor is gone, it is seen that the rich gets off from all the trouble, but the poor is trapped and diseased. In this society the poor are often faced with competition and struggle and are forced to fight between themselves for their living but theirs no attempt or ability to overthrow the prevailing system of domination.This is also portrayed beautifully by the scene where the two poor families fight to get a hold of the phone and thus make their stay in the house.

Thus to sum everything up, its to be said that if one looks at the movie in a normal way it is shown how the poor is feeding up on the rich, i.e the poor are the parasites to rich. But if one is intelligent enough, it can be pointed out that the rich are comparebly more parasitic to the poor. The poor are often poor because the capitalist system (companies) is unwilling to compensate fair wages for them in order to maximize their own profits.

"Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty."

• Fidel Castro