‘PARASITE’ BY BONG JOON HO

SYNOPSIS
The first half of Parasite plays out largely as a comedy-drama with a compelling narrative
and thought-provoking themes.
The Kim family lives in a semi-basement and struggles to keep food on the table. They take
on odd jobs for cash like folding pizza boxes, and they rely on unprotected wi-fi networks
and street-cleaning pesticides to keep their home insect free.
Ki-woo, the son, is gifted a scholar’s stone or suseok by a friend and given a
recommendation for a tutoring job with a wealthy family. Ki-woo and his sister Ki-jung forge
credentials for the job, and thus begins the long-con that sees each member of the Kim
family infiltrating the upper-class Park family one-by-one.
Ki-jung begins working for the parks under the guise of an art-therapy teacher. Ki-taek, the
father, begins working as the Park family chauffeur after the Kims have their previous
chauffeur removed. Similarly, Chung-sook, the mother, replaces Moon-gwang, the
housekeeper who has served the home longer than the Park’s have even lived there. Chung-
sook is framed as deceiving the family by hiding a dangerous illness. The real deception is
carried out by the Kims, and works flawlessly.
Once the entire Kim family is employed in the Park household, the lower-class con-artists
begin to assume more and more of this fabricated identity of wealth. They take the affluent
home as their own while the Parks are away… and that’s when Moon-gwang shows back up
and everything changes.
TITLE MEANING
The title is both literal and figurative. Literally speaking, a parasite is what feeds off another
organism for its own benefit, which figuratively speaking is what the Kims and the Parks do
to each other in their own ways, which radiates outward through the film’s intricate
network of spatial and social relationships. While the Parks and the Kims can both
experience the meaning of the title on a figurative/metaphoric level, it is the Kims who
experience the meaning of the title ‘Parasite’ on a literal level. Quite literally the Kims’
neighbourhood is flooded with sewage water, which puts the all the occupants at risk of
water-borne parasites. There is nothing more local than a parasite physically infiltrating a
body.

“Metaphors are a luxury when you’re constantly exposed to the very thing itself.”
MOTIFS - a dominant or recurring idea in an artistic work from an object, person, situation,
event or action that has a deeper meaning in the overall context beyond a surface
understanding.
Flooding:
Flooding is introduced early in two forms. First, the fumigating truck sends a moist and toxic
cloud into the apartment after Ki-taek insists on leaving open the windows to cull the half-
basement apartment’s stinkbug invasion. Next, a repeated scene of drunken men urinating
in the alley corner that doubles as the apartment’s only access to light and air, leading to a
soaking from a bottle and a bucket. The scene prefigures both the flood and also the stink
and contagion that come to mark, in the film’s lexicon, the impossibility of maintaining a
pure line between the haves and the have-nots, the employers and the employees, the
hosts and the parasites. That the Kims all smell like their apartment, that the smell viscerally
affects the Parks, and that it equally emanates from Geun-se’s (Myeong-hoon Park) body to
prompt Ki-taek’s murder, is established as a key motif within the film’s narrative arc. Their
sensitive noses work to establish the “line” wealthy homeowner Park Dong-ik is obsessed
with maintaining and also to emphasize the impossibility of eliminating the material
experience of poverty. Inhabiting the material rather than the mediated world, the Kims are
bothered by filth and concerned with infection, but they don’t smell it; they live it. The
drunkard’s urine, like the exploding sewage, inspires protest and concern, but no disgust or
revulsion. Within the house, however, infection is metaphorical; to clinch the evidence of
Moon-gwang’s tuberculosis, Ki-taek sprinkles hot sauce onto a used tissue in the kitchen
trash. We know it’s harmless, since we saw it earlier on the Kims’ pizza. But in the context of
the Parks’ kitchen and especially for the impressionable mother Park Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong
Jo), it figures disease.
“Crossing the line”:
Mr. Park is somewhat obsessed with the concept of "crossing the line" and it is a guiding
principle when it comes to how he relates to his employees. When he believes his driver has
had sex in his backseat, Mr. Park is horrified by the idea that he would "cross the line" by
going to the backseat, where he, the employer sits. Then, when he hires Ki-taek, he
comments favorably on the fact that his new driver never "crosses the line." This turn of
phrase is a euphemism referring to an employee's ability to know their place, and not
presume to be on an equal plane with their employer. This is also visually represented. Early
in the film a line is created by the joinery between two panels of window glass, but in the
movie it visually separates the common folks from the privileged ones. Kim Ki-woo and the
housekeeper are at one side of our screen, while the rich lady is on the other side. This line
continues for the next few shots, slicing the screen and separating the poor and the rich.
Even when the rich lady is bringing Kim Ki-woo upstairs, many imaginary lines separate the
characters. In the rich Park family home, there’s a crystal-clear window that showcases a
breathtakingly picturesque backyard. “The backyard almost feels surreal,” he explained.
“When you look at it from the living room, you see it beyond the square, giant glass window
– that’s almost like as screen. The backyard is something that exists beyond the screen. It
seems like the perfect clean and peaceful garden, but it’s also very closed off from the
outside world. None of your neighbors can access it. The tall trees act as a barricade. It’s the
very isolated, clean and peaceful world, but it’s also very cut off. You can say that the trees
almost act as the line – the line that Mr. Park always talks about. Not crossing the line. It’s
creating their own comfortable world within that line.”
Vertical arrangement:
Each house features a prominent window. While one looks out a street level, the other looks
over a manicured lawn. These windows are both slightly unusual in shape, similar to the
shape of the film’s odd 2.39:1 aspect ratio.
In a way our screen is also a window. We, the audience, get to view these two houses
through our windows. And through careful cinematography, these two houses seem to face
each other. The houses face each other from left to right, but they also both have clear
vertical and horizontal relationships. To leave the poor Kim family’s house, they have to
ascend stairs just to get to the street level. Meanwhile to enter the rich family’s house, they
have to keep going up from the street level and climb upstairs to be screened at the entrance
gate. This elevation difference is used continuously throughout the film, which literally
illustrates on-screen the class separation between these families. In the Park’s house, you go
up a staircase to their bedrooms; in the Kim’s, the toilet is even higher than their beds.
In scenes in the Kims’ neighbourhood, the streets at the edge of the screen often seem to
slope upward, giving the impression that there’s always something above them. In the Parks’
neighbourhood, the roads either lead up towards the Park house or slope downward away
from them. Two of the most stunning moments in the film uses these vertical descents to
emphasise the distance between the classes. Earlier in the film, the distance between the
two houses aren’t really illustrated. When the Kims walk, we don’t see their journey, and
when Ki-jeong is driven home, we don’t really get a sense of the distance or the changes in
elevation. But when the Kims’ plan went awry, the film emphasises this distance between the
houses. We are made to join them in their descent. Every shot, as the family runs from the
Park house to their own, moves us downward. We are reminded of Akira Kurosawa’s “High
and Low” or to use it’s Japanese title – “Heaven and Hell.” On the top of the hill is a rich guy
and in the bottom, there is the criminal. It’s basically the same in “Parasite,” but with a lot
more layers. The Kims’ place in the upper class home was just an illusion. During this scene,
we truly see and feel the sheer amount of separation, vertically, between the two homes.
The reveal of the bunker and the man secretly living underneath the house also uses descent.
The long take while the camera careens down the stairs emphasises the descent as much as
possible; the staircase feels almost impossibly long. This is a fairly simple and elegant use of
visual language to communicate a concept. It’s something most viewers will catch on their
first or second viewing.
When half-way through the film, the narrative flips as the plans of the Kim family are dealt a
significant blow – the carefully crafted world that surrounds them reflects that. The physical
descent reflects the fall from grace of the characters and so do the camera angles used.
Now from a distant, wide lens, our characters are shown to be tiny in amongst the
gargantuan buildings, staircases and streets. As they scurry back to their semi-subterranean
home, they look like little insects winding their way back down the varying staircases to
their hellish homelife.
Bong: It’s important that the characters are moving down, but what’s more important is
that water is moving with them: Water is flowing from top to bottom, to the rich
neighborhoods to the poor ones, and these characters they have no control over it. The
water that flows down with them ultimately floods their entire home. I think that’s the
really sad element of that sequence.
He acknowledges an influence - Alfred Hitchcock - just prior to the montage at the end
of act one (with Hitchcock book on the bookshelf or film on shelf) and when interviewed
(Vanity Fair) said he rewatched ‘Psycho’ because the Bates house, not the motel, the house,
had a very interesting structure.
BONG: “while not as rich, Norman Bates’ house is also a two-story home with a staircase
that leads to secrets lurking underneath.”
When I was a little kid in elementary school I watched Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s [film]. The
Bates Motel is fascinating, but I’m more fascinated by the house behind the hotel,
[particularly] the second floor.”
Most especially, it was the overhead shot where Detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) slowly
ascends the stairs of the Bates family home – leading to one of cinema’s greatest jump
scares – that fascinated Bong as a child: then there was Joseph Losey’s 1963 film The
Servant, which “features a male servant and his master, and it takes place in a two-story
house through the staircase.”
Bong’s fixation with the staircase motif bled into Parasite’s production design. “If you look
at the big coffee table in the rich house’s living room ... the intentional design of the table is
like the infinity strip. How the table was designed reflects how the staircases [in the film]
circulate.”
The Viewing Stone
Think about the viewing stone. It comes as a gift that pushes the Kims toward success. But
as we see it throughout the story, it comes to represent the struggle. First, it's the dream of
getting wealthy, but as the story goes on it becomes the dream of moving the entire family
into the upper class.
When we see the drunk peeing outside, it's juxtaposed against the viewing stone.
When the Kims' basement home floods after almost getting caught staying at the Park's
house, it's the viewing stone that floats to the surface...showing their sunken dreams.
Smell
You can’t hide from smell in Parasite. It’s oppressive. It clings to you, seeping into your skin.
It is omnipresent and sinister. Beyond being a mere symbol of social status, the smell
threatens to expose one’s identity and the dark secrets lurking beneath. An almost palpable
sense of smell recurs over and over throughout Parasite. Sometimes it is implied, like when
we see a toilet overflowing crap into the house in contrast to the stark and cleanly mansion.
Sometimes it ties the rich and poor, like when expensive beef is added to the cheap ramen
noodles, and the taste reminds the rich of the poor.
Other times, it's the stink the Kims cannot shake.
The one that lingers as their better life disappears.
Smell ultimately shatters the Parks’ universe, while reminding the Kims that their new
clothes and more generous earnings will somehow never be enough. Both families
demonstrate how social standing and smell interact. Without hesitation the Kims wade
through sewage water, impervious to the stench, to retrieve their few belongings in a flood.
Conversely Mr Park is decisively hampered by a smell he finds distasteful, during his own
life-threatening family emergency.
“These [are the] moments where the basic respect you have for another human being is
being shattered,” Bong says. “Smell really reflects your life. It shows if you’re struggling.
what kind of work you do. Even when you sense the smell of someone else, you don’t talk
about it in the open, because it can be rude.” In another interview, he expanded: “By talking
about different smells, the film puts the class issue under the microscope. Through smells,
the film’s tension and suspense mount, which eventually makes a multi-layered foundation
for the upcoming tragedy.”
In Parasite smell rouses rawer emotions: anger, distrust, discomfort and a dark sense of
foreboding. Something closer to the raw truth. Bong layers rich visuals, but smell remains
the film’s emotive core.
OTHER INTERESTING DETAILS
Architecture
The art on the Parks’ walls is a status symbol, and some of the works that appear are
actually the real deal. An image of a forest made of stainless steel wire mesh from Korean
artist Seung-mo Park’s “Maya” series hangs on one wall. “When I look at the piece, I feel
like I am falling into a silent, solitary space in a forest,” says Lee. “As the image suggests,
the film Parasite flows from a silence to the massive wave starting from a thrown rock in
a well, then becomes quiet again.”
Lee designed each home with parallel front-facing windows and this is important because
we can see the gulf between the two families from the very first shot of them. The poor Kim
family have a morsel of window to let in light. By stark contrast – the Rich have a window
shaped in classic widescreen aspect ratio – 2.39:1).
BONG: “That giant glass window basically was built in this CinemaScope ratio. We designed
it like that on purpose, so that when people are sitting in the sofa and drinking whiskey, it
almost feels like they’re watching a film screen. And for the poor house, the window is
longer and it also gives a sense that this family has no privacy, that anyone outside can look
in and sort of infiltrate their home. Essentially, they’re looking through the same window,
but they’re seeing completely different things.”
Bong shoots the two windows the same way he would shoot two characters in conversation.
Kim’s window from the right side always and the Park’s always from the left. The houses
face each other from left to right, but what is potently clear is the vertical relationship they
share.
BONG: “The characters in the poor house have no privacy. They’re completely exposed to
the street — sometimes fumigation gas or floodwater might flow in; and there’s a drunk guy
who regularly urinates right outside their window. The wealthy family’s central window, on
the other hand, looks out onto a beautiful garden. When it rains, instead of worrying about
floodwater, they look out and appreciate the mood and the view.”
Visually, Parasite starts from the bottom and works its way up. The poor live underground
and rich live above-ground with the line of separation between the classes being the ground
itself. Kim Ki-taek and his family live underground, a position they are forced into due to
their low-income status – when portraying poverty, it’s about as on-the-nose as
you can get!
The house is dirty,
The drunk and inebriated urinate by their window
The family is forced to live an uncivilised existence with very little natural light
Their lack of work has them folding pizza boxes for a living
All of these elements are exacerbated by the use of the camera (and audience) – looking
down on the Kim family is something that Bong and Hong employ throughout the opening
of the film and that only changes when the son of the Kim family becomes the tutor to the
richer Park family where our perspective flips and we look up at him.
The camera infiltrates this poor family’s space at the beginning of the film descending on
the claustrophobic home of the Kim family from the streets above.
Lighting:
Lee: “Mr. Park’s house is minimal, uncluttered, large and orderly. It’s a large house with a
large garden consisting of controlled colors and materials—a contrast to the semi-basement
neighborhood.”
Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo explains how the lighting itself helped convey the class
divide at the heart of “Parasite”—from the amount of sunlight available in any given scene,
to the types of indoor lighting that would realistically be used in a Korean semi-basement
apartment.
“First, I tried to reflect the gap between the rich and the poor in the amount of
sunshine. This was something that director Bong and I had already studied the most with
discussions and test shooting. In the rich mansion, on the high ground, you can see the
sunlight all day long through the wide windows everywhere during all the daytime when the
sun is up. On the other hand, sunlight comes through a small window in the semi-basement
house and can be seen only for a short moment of the day. The sunny area is just as limited
as the size of the small window. That is why residents of semi-basement units turn on the
indoor light during daytime.”
So the cinematographer installed the same low-end lighting lamps (greenish fluorescent and
tungsten incandescent) used by Korean households in Ki-taek’s home.
The street lamps outside were given a dim, reddish color that he says created a very dull,
deadening feeling.
Shooting at the Park home, on the other hand, was done in natural light and only warm-
toned lighting was used in the interiors.
“We appropriately placed expensive indoor lighting and LED lighting that were actually
installed in such mansions. We focused on depicting the softness and the sophistication
exclusive to rich households by using warm-colored lights, gentle indirect lighting, and
applying dimmer switches (unlike greenish fluorescent light). In the end, semi-basement
lighting was ‘technical lighting’ while the lighting in Park’s house was ‘aesthetic lighting.’