This one has lots of buzz, Oscar buzz to boot. The subject matter is in my wheelhouse: class struggle and inequality through the eyes of two different South Korean families, the Kims and the Parks, and how the sub-basement dwelling family finds an opportunity to improve their desperate lot.
When the son of the struggling family has a choice tutoring job for a wealthy family handed to him by a college friend, mindful of his family's perpetual underemployment (underlining a subtle theme of "it's who you know"), he seeks to surreptitiously insert the rest of his family into their household one by one, filling the roles of another tutor for a rambunctious 9-year-old boy, a chauffeur, and finally, housekeeper.
It's not as if these jobs fall into their laps; these vacancies are actively created by the Kim family in creative and ruthless ways, sowing seeds of dissension in the Parks' minds as the loyal employees are dismissed. When the family is completely employed and are making "tons of money" (so says the father), I wondered if the viewer is meant to ask, how much is enough? I also found it interesting that there's no real effort made by the family to move out of their alleyway microapartment, to improve upon their lot to go along with their increased earnings. There's talk about sending the son to college, sure.
But a sign that the Kims have been marked by their station in life is the mention more than once of the Kims' "smell" by the Parks, as if they can't escape who they really are, and while the Kims are faking it, there's something essentialy wrong that the Parks somehow can't quite put their finger on. The writer/director (Bong Joon-Ho) also cleverly presents the ideas that to make these ecosystems work in the households of both rich and poor, lies need to be told to maintain the facades.
One of the things I liked about the film is that the wealthy Parks, while gullible and "simple," aren't portrayed as monsters or hateful. Perhaps that makes for a fuzzier read as to who are the playing the roles of antagonists here. Is it really a sin to be wealthy? Is it misguided for climbers to aspire to those heights? Is it foolish to bow at the image of those who have "made it"? Where is the line for what is acceptable while trying to better oneself, indeed, to survive?
Those questions are addressed in bold font with the introduction of the twist during the second half of the movie, when a faction associated with the Parks resurfaces in a shocking way, adding another layer, revealing on a broader canvas that it's not just the Kims that are struggling, and stations that are wrested away will sometimes need to be defended, violently so.
Inexorably moves towards a conclusion that feels both inevitable and hopeless. As the climactic tragedy occurs, it becomes fodder for the news cycle, discarded, and the struggle continues much as it had before, suggesting that this simmer-to-boiling over cycle will repeat somewhere else, some other time. And despite it all, the Kims will continue to strive and maintain a fantasy that may be eternally out of reach.
There's been talk of an Oscar nomination for this film, which I agree, is deserved, but I can't imagine, even in this time of heightened attention to the subject of inequality, that this film will garner a lot of votes. One rarely sees this bleak of a film embraced by a mass audience and given statuettes. (Amusingly, the in-house theater poster chooses to quote the Atlantic review that says this film might be "the funniest" of the year. This may get a few butts in the seats, but I think this is seriously misrepresenting the film's tone, even for fans of dark humor). We shall see.
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