Parasite won the 2019 Best Picture Oscar, and three others: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film, more than any other film that year. The other contenders were Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I have not seen any of them. The Hugo that year went to a TV series and the Ray Bradbury Award to an episode of that same TV series.
It was the year of the pandemic so I don’t think I have seen any other films made that year except Knives Out, which I liked a lot, maybe a bit more than Parasite. (I think this is the least number of films that I have seen from any year since 1958.) IMDB users rate Parasite 3rd and 6th on the two rankings, respectable enough, with only Avengers: Endgame ahead of it on both.
Here’s a trailer.
Usually I run through the crossovers in terms of casting between each year’s Oscar winner, previous Oscar / Hugo / Nebula/Bradbury winners and Doctor Who, but here there aren’t any because the film is entirely Korean.
It’s the story of a deadbeat family in Seoul, the Kims, who manage to insinuate themselves into a rich household, the Parks, without revealing to their employers that they are all relatives. It turns out that there is a secret in the basement, and disaster ensues. It’s very funny and very well done. The Jungian theme of buried secrets is nicely executed. The audacity and sheer chutzpah of the Kims in pulling off their scheme can be seen as a small example of the class struggle, or a metaphor for any other sort of transformation if you like.
It’s great to see a completely local ensemble cast, with as many leading women as men, shining a light on a society that I don’t know very much about at all. English slang is freely used (as indeed it is in the streets of Brussels). European classical music is played. But there’s also the shadow of the nuclear rogue state whose frontier is only 40 km from the centre of Seoul. The Kims joke about it, but you know it’s serious as well.
I found the violence at the end of the movie as their scheme disintegrates rather jarring and not at all funny, after an hour and a half of solid laughs. So I’m bumping it down my ratings a bit. But otherwise this was a real find, and I’m ranking it between two other films about criminals, exactly a third of the way down my table, just below The Godfather and above The Sting.
Next up: Nomadland, of which I know nothing.
Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture
1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)