Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

It is a derogatory term you might expect a class warrior apply to the idle rich or entrepreneurs might use to describe those who are out to sponge off the fruits of their talent and achievements. It cuts both ways, so it is the perfect title of Bong Joon-ho’s boldly ambiguous, Palme d’Or-winning Parasite, South Korea’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens today in New York.

Kim Ki-taek’s family only occasionally works odd jobs, but they have knack for freeloading (stealing) wifi. They live in a squalid basement apartment, but have no real interest in raising themselves out of it. However, they immediately recognize a golden opportunity when their son Ki-woo is invited to take over the college-prep tutoring of the Park family’s high school student daughter, from his former classmate.

Thanks to Ki-woo’s inside information, the Kim family conspires to replace the other household servants, while keeping their own familial relationships secret. Technically, they will have to work, but they enjoy plenty of luxuries on the sly, courtesy of the Parks. It all goes exactly according to plan, until a third party threatens to upset the new equilibrium.

Frankly, it seems like Bong lost control of his film to his characters, as if they came alive and commandeered their own movie, but that is a good thing—a very good thing. Bong’s last two films have been so bluntly and crudely didactic, they have been embarrassing to watch. Parasite is something else entirely. There are more than enough elements to support radically different readings of the film and it constantly challenges us to reconsider where our sympathies really ought to lie. In some ways, it could be compared to Joker, for the way it confounds expectations and undercuts lazy snap moral judgements. After all, just because characters have been bullied or have been economically and socially marginalized does not automatically make them morally superior.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of poor and distressed characters who are victimized in Parasite—by the Kims. Conversely, the rich Parks are not all bad. In fact, they just might have greater merits than the Kims (admittedly a low bar to clear). Mrs. Park is guileless and easily manipulated, but she is generally sweet-tempered. Mr. Park is a devoted family man, but he definitely expects the social hierarchy to be strictly respected (given what we learn about his new driver, Kim Ki-taek, it is hard to blame him). In contrast, Mr. and Mrs. Kim practically declare themselves to socialists occupying the Park home, as well as stone-cold sociopaths

Okja: Bong Joon-ho Hates Science

After Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, every little girl will want her own genetically modified pig—and why shouldn’t she? There is absolutely no scientific evidence of any danger stemming from GMO crops or livestock. Don’t tell that to Bong. He has no interest in what science has to say. His crusade against GMO’s is rooted in religious fervor. He believes they are wrong, therefore they must be. In an effort to promulgate the faith, he will introduce the world to an endearing little girl and her giant pig in the Netflix production, Okja (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York.

When Lucy Mirando took over her father’s chemical and agricultural corporation, she took a page out of Google’s book, projecting an idealistic façade, while employing cutthroat tactics behind closed doors. The super-pig project is her piglet. Dozens of genetically enhance piggies like Okja were placed with traditional farmers around the world to track the impact of regional variables. Okja’s TLC-upbringing in the mountains of South Korea yielded the most impressive results. Now Mirando wants to showcase their poster-pig, so they have ripped him away from Mika, his beloved thirteen-year-old companion.

Of course, a plucky kid like Mija isn’t going to give up her pig without a fight. Her first attempt to rescue Okja causes such a media kerfuffle, Mirando tries to coopt her, on the wise counsel of corporate greybeard Frank Dawson. However, Mija knows when she is being used. That also applies to the animal rights activists who want to deliberately put Okja back in harm’s way for the good of their cause. Thanks to a bit of deliberate mistranslation, that is exactly what they do.

Wow, Bong Joon-ho hates science. Anyone wearing a lab coat in his films ranks somewhere between Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy on the morality spectrum. He can also be a talented filmmaker when he isn’t hitting the audience over the head with his message. Mother and Memories of Murder are both terrific films. Unfortunately, Okja reflects the kneejerk anti-Americanism of The Host, but spiked with virulent anti-Capitalist rhetoric and marinated in a luddite contempt for technological development. The idyllic scenes of Mija and Okja look amazing and they do indeed pull our heartstrings. However, the manipulation throughout the film is so blatant and relentless, it just becomes a wearisome chore to endure.

Still, the Okja team made her remarkably expressive. Young Ahn Seo-hyun is also appealingly plucky as a Mija and she is clearly a natural working with the big pig effects. It is also good fun to watch the crafty veteran Giancarlo Esposito do his thing as the sly Dawson. However, Tilda Swinton’s shamelessly ridiculous turn as the Mirando sisters makes Snidely Whiplash look like a model of subtlety in comparison, even though he is literally a cartoon villain. However, nothing can compare to the pain of watching Jake Gyllenhaal mug and cavort as fallen-from-grace TV nature programming host, Dr. Johnny Wilcox. Ouch, that will leave a mark on your soul.

There are ethical implications to this film as well. Imagine how counter-productive it might have been if a leading genre filmmaker like George Pal released a film demonizing immunizations a few years before the rollout of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. Granted, widespread famines are still largely deliberately caused by dictators to control or even decimate large population segments, but there is still a great deal of hunger and malnutrition in the world. GMO food could be a godsend to those suffering, but Bong is whipping up an irrational fervor against such scientific breakthroughs.

Make no mistake, this is a religiously motivated film. It is an article faith that just so happens to have a big, cute super-pig. Hopefully “corporate media” will eventually defang and rehabilitate Okja, turning her into the star of her own Saturday morning kids show. She is pretty much the only reason to see her eponymous film and you really don’t want to watch what Bong puts her through. Not recommended, Okja opens this Wednesday (6/28) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

ND/NF ’15: Haemoo

There will be no shuffleboard for the passengers of this vessel. Nor will they find any class solidarity with the impoverished crew. Instead, the ethnic Korean illegal immigrants being trafficked from China will be treated with contempt, hostility, and lethal negligence, but karma will come back around good and hard as it always does in Shim Sung-bo’s Haemoo (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Co-adapted by Shim and lefty auteur Bong Joon-ho from a 2003 play, Haemoo somewhat fictionalizes the real life 2001 maritime tragedy that forced the Korean government to issue an apology to China for deaths of twenty-five illegal migrants. Of course, the Chinese government might have considered apologizing for creating the circumstances that made the hard passage seem reasonable, but apparently that would be asking too much. In this case, it is the Ahab-esque fishing captain Kang Chul-joo who takes on the trafficking run, in hopes of making enough money to buy back his beloved but decrepit trawler from its disinterested owners.

Obviously, the boat is ill-equipped to handle large numbers of passengers. Tempers flare when Kang hides them in the fish hold, but he silences protest with ruthless efficiency. The attractive Hong-mae further destabilizes the situation, inspiring lust and jealousy among the crew. However, she finds a surprisingly resourceful protector in the earnest engineer’s mate, Dong-sik. Thanks to his efforts, she will survive the initial wave of tragedy, but the ship soon descends into every-man-for-himself anarchy.

Shim and Bong (who also co-wrote Memories of Murder) unleash their inner B.Travens in Haemoo, combining class consciousness with close-quarters mayhem. Yet, it is never as abrasive as Bong’s more overtly didactic films, such as The Host and Snowpiercer. This is really old fashioned noir, at its most naturalistic and fatalistic. At one point, characters blame the IMF for their despicable actions, which is relatively reasonable by Bong’s standards.

Regardless, Kim Yun-seok commands with picture portraying Kang’s mounting mania with unnerving intensity. He is a terrific villain-in-denial, combining psycho-elements of Captain Queeg and Robert Ryan’s Slater in Odds Against Tomorrow. Han Ye-ri is also a terrific humanizing element, directly expressing Hong-mae’s fear and resiliency. Unfortunately, Park Yoon-chun’s Dong-sik looks rather stiff and awkward by comparison, but Moon Sung-geun adds the perfect note of ill-fated dignity as the veteran engineer.

Despite its relevancy to current controversies, Haemoo works as a taut Then There Were None thriller, with Perfect Storm-like atmosphere laid on top for extra added menace. This is exactly the kind of film Kevin Macdonald’s Black Sea should have been, but fell sadly short. Recommended for fans of nautical thrillers who appreciate dark irony, Haemoo screens this Friday (3/20) at MoMA and Saturday (3/21) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s ND/NF.

Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer

In the future, the world will become a giant allegory. Nothing in this claustrophobic dystopia performs a practical purpose, but serves a vision of class warfare at its most extreme. At least it all looks cool when the train’s tail-section revolts in Bong Joon-ho’s first English language production Snowpiercer (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Seventeen years ago, a climate control experiment went horribly wrong. Now that the Earth is a frozen wasteland, the only surviving humans live in the protection of the globe circling train providentially prepared by the mysterious Wilford. However, instead of assigning productive tasks to each survivor, the Wilford express maintains a rigid and baffling bizarre social caste system. The further up you travel, the richer, crueler, and idler the passengers get. It’s all sushi and filet mignon up front, but gelatinous protein bars for the proletarian in the tail-section, who do not really appear to work either, but just sit around waiting to be beaten by the guards (apparently the train’s only productive class).

Curtis Everett has emerged as the leader of the proles in the back of the train, whether he likes it or not. He is still haunted the things he did during his darkest, most desperate hours, but old Gilliam provides encouragement and wise counsel to the budding revolutionary. Everett is biding his time, waiting for a cue from a source ensconced somewhere further up the train, but the arbitrary ruthlessness of Minister Mason, a buck-toothed caricature of an elitist exploiter, forces his hand. Freeing Nam-gung Min-su, the drug-addled Korean security specialist who designed the train’s door locks, and his train-born daughter Yo-na, Everett and his followers plan to fight their way to the engine room. Stopping anywhere short of that will doom their revolt.

Frankly, Snowpiercer is even less subtle than it sounds. Tilda Swinton is a great screen thespian, but her portrayal of Mason is embarrassingly cringey. She is also emblematic of the film’s fundamental problem—this simply is not a believable world. People act mean and savage for no logical reason accept to live up to a class-based stereotype. Nonetheless, production designer Ondřej Nekvasil and art director Štefan Kováčik created a distinctively detailed calling card that ought to earn them a gig on the next Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton film.

If you prefer your movie leads on the sullen side than you will probably be okay with Chris Evans’ turn as Everett. He is a brooding machine, but looks respectable during the well-staged action sequences. John Hurt’s Obiwan shtick also works well enough for Gilliam the sage. However, the only real surprises found in the film come from the characters of Nam-gung Min-su and Yo-na—as well as the respective performances of Korean superstar Song Kang-ho and Ko Ah-sung, his juvenile co-star in The Host. Viewers should keep their eyes on this tandem, because together they nearly redeem all of Snowpiercer’s flaws.

Uncut by the Weinsteins, Snowpiercer is so didactic it will give intellectually sophisticated viewers a headache. Yet, there are fascinating Easter Eggs buried throughout it, thanks to a skilled design team and Bong’s Host alumni. Diverting for those who appreciate spectacle and mayhem, but disappointing on any deeper level, Snowpiercer opens this Friday (6/27) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Bong Joon-ho’s Mother

Mothers worry. It’s what they do. One Korean mother has good reason to worry more than most. Her slow-witted son, Yoon Do-joon, has a knack for getting into trouble and taxing their meager financial resources. Yet when he is manipulated into confessing to murder, clearing his name may cost her everything in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (trailer here), which opens theatrically in New York this Friday

As an unlicensed acupuncturist, Yoon’s unnamed mother has trouble making ends meet. He does not make things easy either. Though in his late twenties, he is not much of a bread winner. He hangs out with the wrong crowd, drinking, fighting, and carousing. Still, his mother knows he is not a bad kid. So when the lazy cops trick the vulnerable Yoon into a confession, his mother is his only hope.

Much like Twin Peaks’s Laura Palmer, the murdered girl had a murky extracurricular life that might have gotten her killed. Indeed, Mother’s mysterious vibe and its small town secrets very definitely bring to mind the work of David Lynch. Yet, like Bong’s previous genre pictures, it is first and foremost a tragedy. However, Yoon’s mother surpasses all Bong’s previous angst-ridden characters as a tragic figure of truly classic proportions.

While Won Bin is quite convincing as the difficult Yoon, Kim Hye-ja truly is Mother, both the character and the film. Long the personification of motherhood for Korean audiences for her role as a family matriarch on a long-running television drama, here Kim simultaneously plays with and against type. Her Mother is fiercely protective, yet there is something dark and dreadful lurking within her—maybe not Medea-dark, but undeniably tragic in the Greek tradition. It is a searing performance that absolutely defines and dominates the film.

With credentials from the 2009 Cannes and New York Film Festivals, Mother is more than just a genre mystery picture, though it is still effective on that level. Bong maintains an unsettling mood and skillfully handles the film’s ironic revelations. Aside from one oddly surreal motif, Mother has an unremitting naturalism that actually acts as an effective restraint on Bong’s tendency to politicize his films, seen at its most pronounced in the over-rated The Host and to a lesser extent in his very strong sophomore feature Memories of Murder.

Arguably, Mother is Bong’s best, most mature work yet. Viscerally affecting, it is an unsparing portrait of maternal love and desperation. Successful as genre and art-house cinema, Mother is a return to form for the talented director. It opens Friday (3/12) at the IFC Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Theater.

Bong at BAM: Memories of Murder

Evidently, 1986 was a good year to be a serial killer in South Korea, with periodic protests distracting the police. Inspired by the actual unsolved case of the country’s first publicized serial killer, Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder (trailer here), opens Monsters and Murderers, the director’s upcoming BAM Cinematek retrospective this coming Thursday.

Probably the centerpiece of the series is a pre-release screening of Bong’s latest film, Mother, the story of one woman’s desperate attempt to exonerate her mentally challenged son of a murder conviction. In fact, Mother and Memories are somewhat related thematically, even sharing some important plot points when the provincial police browbeat a false confession out of a slow-witted suspect. Needless to say, they are soon proved tragically wrong.

It starts with one body, but more soon follow. Lending his expertise to the local force, Seoul Detective Seo Tae-yoon identifies certain patterns: rain, red clothing. However, he clashes rather badly with local slacker cop Park Doo-man, even coming to blows at crucial junctures of the investigation. At least they seem to be on the right track when Kwon Gui-ok, the only often-dismissed woman officer on the force, figures out another key trigger—radio requests for an obscure pop song.

Though Memories was only Bong’s second feature, one can still see hallmarks of his decidedly dark approach to genre filmmaker present throughout. It definitely resists feel good heroics, preferring angst and tragedy. Bong clearly is not afraid to kill off characters that would be sacrosanct in Hollywood films and if you want tidy closure, his filmography is probably not for you.

As a noir serial killer, albeit a particularly dark one, Memories is quite effective. While Mother is more challenging in tone and implications, Memories contemplative contemporary coda memorably encapsulates ambiguities and uncertainty of Bong’s world view. As Detective Park, Bong regular Song Kang-ho does lazy and loutish to perfection, while also digging deeper for the really heavy climax and denouement.

Throughout Memories, Bong masterfully maintains the creepy atmosphere and slow-boiling tension, while also offering an unsettlingly grim assessment of human nature. That all seems to be what Bong films are all about based on the evidence of the four features and three shorts programmed for the Monsters and Murderers series. Far superior to Bong’s breakout hit The Host and nearly as strong as Mother, Memories kicks off BAM’s retrospective this coming Thursday (2/25).

Bong at BAM: Shaking Tokyo

There must be something about the city of Tokyo. Some of the coolest people I know are Japanese musicians living in New York. Yet, Tokyo is often represented in pop culture as a lonely city. Indeed, it is portrayed by Bong Joon-ho and two other stylistically distinctive international directors as a city of profound alienation in the fantastical anthology film, Tokyo! (trailer here). Bong’s contribution, Shaking Tokyo, truly personifies alienation, taking the audience into the closed world of the Hikikomori, urban recluses who have almost no human contact whatsoever. Screening separately from the rest of the Tokyo! film, Shaking is part of a slate of shorts programmed for Monsters and Murders, BAM’s upcoming Bong retrospective.

The so-called hikikomori are youngish, acutely withdrawn shut-ins thought to be a particularly Japanese phenomenon by some social scientists. Such is the protagonist of Bong’s Shaking. He must have food delivered, but he steadfastly avoids eye contact with the delivery people. However, when the pizza delivery girl (played by Yu Aoi) mysteriously collapses during an earthquake, he cannot help but take notice of her. Following their surreal encounter, he is a basket-case for two days. Eventually he tries to see her again, but is alarmed to discover his example might have inspired her to adopt the hikikomori lifestyle as well.

Teruyuki Kagawa, familiar to American audiences from the 20th Century Boys series, is quite compelling as unnamed hikikomori, carrying the nearly one-person film, despite the emotionally withdrawn nature of his character. Bong’s oblique camera angles and claustrophobic environment also nicely convey the neurotic perspective of his protagonist. Though there are no monsters or murders in Shaking, the extent of the hikikomori’s anti-social compulsions and their seductiveness to those potentially sharing the inclination is actually quite frightening. Still, unlike his typical features, Bong wraps it all up on a possibly hopeful note (or perhaps not), yet without sacrificing the integrity of his story.

Whether it is because they suffer from deep-seated emotional issues or are running for their lives from wild-eyed Frenchmen, human connections are maddeningly difficult to forge throughout Tokyo! in general and Shaking in particular. It is probably a strong second best installment in a well above average anthology film. It screens with Influenza and Sink and Rise this next coming Monday (3/1) as the Bong retrospective continues at BAM.

Bong at BAM: The Host

Unlike Japan, Korea is not used to being terrorized by large rampaging monsters. While this scaly mutant might not be Godzilla or Mothra sized, it is quick as a cat and reportedly carries a deadly virus, so it definitely a big time threat to Korean homeland security. Yet for one family, fighting the creature gets desperately personal in Bong Joon-ho’s international breakout hit The Host (trailer here), which screens next week during Monsters and Murderers, BAM Cinematek’s Bong retrospective.

It had already been a disappointing day at Park Gang-du’s family snack shack, even before an amphibious monster jumps out of the Han River. They had watched on television as his sister Nam-joo lost her archery competition because she did not release her final shot in time (a little foreshadowing maybe?). It gets far worse when Park’s daughter Hyun-seo is presumed dead in the aftermath of the creature’s first rampage. However, she has actually been more-or-less safely regurgitated back at the monster’s hidden lair and is able to make a brief cell call to her grieving father.

Since the clueless authorities are completely disinterested in the Parks’ possible lead on the monster’s location, they set off to rescue Hyun-seo themselves. To do so, they will have to sneak through various quarantines, because the monster is also the host for a lethally contagious virus, except not really. It turns out that is just one of many deceptions perpetrated by the U.S. military for mysteriously perverse reasons.

How did the monster come into being? Actually, it was all America’s fault, or more specifically the fault of an American military doctor, who had countless bottles of formaldehyde poured down the drain, simply because he is a creep. Indeed, such persistent anti-Americanism is a frequent distraction in The Host and one reason why the film is not nearly as much fun as it ought to be.

Bong is a filmmaker with a tragic sensibility, but it does not lend itself as readily to the monster movie genre, as compared to his dark crime dramas. Still, one of the cool things about The Host is that a major character could conceivably die at any time, so the stakes are always high. Indeed, Bong is not one to compulsively tie his films up with neat happy endings. While this leads to a compellingly ambiguous effect in his previous film, Memories of Murder, it is basically a downer here.

While the monster effects are in fact quite well produced, frankly that is the least important aspect of a good creature feature. Host might have been billed by critics as good clean monster movie fun, but it is actually quite dour and angst-ridden. Its unflattering take on Americans, particularly the military, is not exactly subtle either. In reality, should a giant mutant ever crawl out of the Han River, one would bet Bong would be decidedly relieved to see a company of Yanks show up to engage the beast. Host is the film that made Bong’s name in America though, so one would expect BAM to screen it during their retrospective. However, Bong’s latest, Mother, represents a definite return to form for the director. It is an excellent film that will be reviewed here in conjunction with its March 12th theatrical release. Mother has one special sneak peak screening at BAM on Friday (2/26) and The Host screens the following day, with Bong present for Q&A both evenings.