Everyone Is The Parasite In The Movie ‘Parasite’
The haves and the have nots have more in common than they think
The movie Parasite deserves its four Oscar wins, including a historic first — a foreign language movie had never won Best Picture before. It is currently streaming on Hulu if you haven’t seen it.
Yes, there are subtitles. But a little reading never hurt anybody. The point is every American should watch it because it’s a movie about the haves, the have nots, and the have nothings. In this country, at least, those three are all in a row on their knees, attached to one another like a human centipede.
I personally found it to be both visceral and cerebral — it punches you in the gut while you’re watching and then kicks you in the brain a few days later.
But fair warning: Parasite is a mouthful. It’s a lot. The movie is a hearty stew of genres: satire, domestic drama, tragedy. Parasite is a con artist comedy and a brutal class war movie. This can be overwhelming for Americans, I think, who like their movies cut into tidy slices: a romantic-comedy is just that, romance and comedy. A drama is clenched jaws and eyes filled with tears and passionate speeches. Horror is blood splatter or spooky children. Parasite is all of these things and lovingly insists you chug it all down at once, in…
