Discover great cinema and the connections that made it possible.
SOUTH KOREA · 2019
Parasite
Synopsis
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Cinematic DNA
Bong Joon-ho has said Lee Chang-dong taught him that genre films could carry the weight of social critique without becoming lectures — that entertainment and political anger could share the same frame. Burning and Secret Sunshine are the films that built the tradition Parasite sits inside. But the deeper ancestor is Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) — a Korean film about class resentment in a domestic space, which Bong has called the founding text of Korean cinema. It's on MUBI.
The Housemaid from Kim Ki-young is a giant tree, casting a huge shadow over Korean cinema. This idea of people from lower economic classes infiltrating the house of a rich family is a very universal theme.
— Bong Joon-ho · BFI Q&A with Bong Joon-ho (November 2019, reported by IndieWire)
Films with Similar Themes
class struggle · deception and infiltration · wealth inequality · family desperation · social hierarchy
