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Did ‘Parasite’ Deserve to Win the ‘Best Picture’ Oscar?
Bong Joon-ho’s film is a fantastic piece of cinema, but the Academy may have gotten it wrong.
Parasite was an amazing film, it truly was. However, it was not worthy of the coveted Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’ in my opinion. For all those who beg to differ, who say its win was groundbreaking, allow me to elaborate. First and foremost, Parasite’s quality lay heavily in its writing. The screenplay — with its twisty plot, metaphorical symbolism and clever irony — was extraordinary and definitely deserving of the Academy’s ‘Best Original Screenplay’ award.
Also, I must say that winning the ‘Best Original Screenplay Award’ as a foreign-language film was a commendable feat, especially in light of the fact that most Oscar voters missed out on one key aspect of a script: the dialogue and whatever tacit references or connotations the choice of Korean vocabulary had concealed, and yet they still deemed it the best. But no other component of the film was remarkable enough to be on par with several of the other nominees.
Personally, I thought the acting was mediocre (though I acknowledge the Screen Actors Guild disagree). It’s also true that, as a native English-speaker who doesn’t know a hint of Korean, it may not be possible for me to judge Parasite’s cast’s acting to the same degree as the others. But that’s the case for most of the Academy members as well. It’s unclear in how high of a regard the Academy held the acting since Parasite didn’t receive a single acting nomination. For me, the acting was a major downside. I’m not saying that a film needs an acting nomination to win ‘Best Picture’; however, I do think that the acting still has to be of a certain quality and, historically, the Academy seems to agree too. On that note, no other film has won the top prize without an acting nomination in the last decade, and just two others won it in the 2000s: Slumdog Millionaire (2009) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004), and both of those films emerged victorious in a lot of other categories.
Of the two categories that Parasite missed out on, I can accept the ‘Film Editing’ nomination, but surely not the ‘Production Design’ one. The objective of designing a mansion and a slum was neither unique, nor demanding. Furthermore, I feel as though people often confuse what was specified in the screenplay with the production design team’s role. For example, the idea of depicting the indigent Kim family as living physically below the affluent Park family with the steep flights of steps and the upward-sloping ground was brilliant, but credit goes primarily to the writers. Implementing this was no tough task and, despite it being done well, it didn’t contribute much to the film’s overall quality.
This is in stark contrast with recreating — both realistically and aesthetically — Hollywood in the 1960s (Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood), Massachusetts in the 1860s (Little Women), a World War I battlefield (1917), or Nazi-occupied Germany (Jojo Rabbit). It is true that period pieces tend to have and need production design that transports the audience to another world, but there have been past nominees that were not period pieces (or sci-fi films)that have had brilliant production design such as La La Land, Mary Poppins Returns, Her and Life of Pi. In general, the production design of most other past nominees did not just strengthen the film’s themes, it had an exquisite impact of its own on the films that far outweighed that of Parasite’s.
As far as direction goes, I do not think Bong Joon-ho should’ve been the recipient of the ‘Best Director’ Oscar either. Along the lines of the previous argument based on the screenplay’s strength, his direction was not crucial to making the film great. All Joon-ho had to do was follow an incredible script. While it is true that he is one of the writers and undoubtedly had a vision for the film (for which he also received plenty of praise), what he added as a director was nugatory in comparison to other directors this year.
Take a nominated film like 1917, which contained a bare flow of events within the screenplay; it was up to director Sam Mendes to gracefully weave the interplay between all the other cinematic elements, including the cinematography, production design, music, sound editing and mixing, in order to create an engaging film. Considering how little dialogue the writing contributed, and how much creative ambiguousness the presentation of the plot entailed, I think his task of directing was not just difficult, but easy to mess up as well. You can infer how active a role Mendes played from the showers of praise he received from each team that won an Academy Award for 1917: cinematography, visual effects, and sound mixing.
This again brings up the broader point that the writing carried the the rest of the film for Parasite. This does not detract from the director’s role, though it certainly makes it easier. It is no coincidence that in the past decade, only two films (Birdman and The King’s Speech) have won both ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’, and neither of them was as dependent on its screenplay as Parasite. It is Parasite’s screenplay that contains the ingenuity of Bong Joon-ho. I did not find any other element of the film particularly special.
As a way to end, and this argument is debatable but will suffice, if the exact same film had been made in English, yes, it would’ve been critically acclaimed, but I don’t think it would have won ‘Best Picture’. It felt more like one of those very intriguing films that only earns a ‘Best (Original or Adapted) Screenplay’ nomination like Knives Out or The Lobster that may, in some cases, get a ‘Best Picture’ nod more out of courtesy than an actual chance of winning, like Get Out or possibly Jojo Rabbit.
The Best Picture award should go to the film in which the various cinematic elements (the different categories, so to say) synergise to the greatest extent, where they all complement and augment each other to create the final film, not necessarily the most thought-provoking or original. This wasn’t the case for Parasite. As I said above, the most original and thought-provoking films tend to be the nominees and winners of the ‘Best Screenplay’ categories.
Altogether, I feel as though Parasite simply lacked several of the characteristics of not just the ‘Best Picture’ winner, but even a nominee. Characteristics like being culturally or socially or historically significant (Moonlight, Spotlight, Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood), exceedingly well or interestingly made (The Shape of Water, Birdman, 1917) or very moving (Green Book, The King’s Speech, Little Women) in ways that have a profound impact on the audience were not present. Most nominees contain several of these characteristics, if not all. What I’m trying to say is that because Parasite thrives on implicit metaphors and layered symbolism, it lacks in having as direct and emotional an effect on the audience as other films. Frankly, it is the ‘Best Original Screenplay’ category that captures what was awesome about Parasite.
Finally, here is my hypothesis for why Parasite won ‘Best Picture’.
I think the majority of Academy voters were split between Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood and 1917 for the first choice, but Parasite dominated in second and third preference votes, which also carry a lot of weight, and that proved to be enough to tip the result in its favour. There also tends to be a lot of admiration for South Korean culture, so that may have contributed too.
I do want to reiterate what I started with: I loved Parasite and definitely recommend people watch it. Nevertheless, considering the calibre of the other nominees, it wasn’t ‘Best Picture’ worthy for me. I expected Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood to win (but my favourite film of the year was Little Women). Then again, I’m not an Academy voter, so this is just my two cents.
