Last night I watched Parasite with Liz. I thought it sucked. Get ready for spoilers if you haven’t seen it but honestly, I would recommend against wasting your time on it. All of the awards hype is bullshit. More on that later. First, the film itself.
A few of the actors were good but most of them were terrible, just cartoonish and over-the-top. I don’t know if that’s more of a cultural thing than an acting thing, like maybe Koreans are more animated in real life, but I doubt it.
I thought the feel of the movie was all over the map — it started out silly and fun, then got sort of thriller-ish, then serious, then silly again — and not in a Twin Peaks way that seems intentional and fun. It just felt inconsistent and amateurish.
There were tons of undeveloped or forgotten characters and elements all throughout the film, like the boy’s friend who left Korea and got him the job in the first place. I hate when films introduce characters as if they are going to play a role later on, only to never address them again. And the man hiding in the basement was weird and dumb, especially once he seemed to inexplicably lose his mind — so he has lived in a hidden bunker for four years with almost no human contact and is still happy and well-adjusted, and then suddenly he snaps when he gets in a fight with the main characters? That was dumb. And again, his “now I’m out of my mind” acting was ridiculous, laughable.
There were too many ham-fisted metaphors throughout the film, like the green rock that Kevin carries around that eventually brains him. Fuck, I’m sick of these kinds of obvious allegories in supposedly artsy films. Learn some subtlety, for piss sake.
The movie was way too long, too. I have no problem with long films — I generally like a good slow burn, actually — but Parasite was over two hours long, and felt way longer than that. I think that speaks volumes about how interesting and/or entertaining a film is, or isn’t in this case. Boring, meandering.
And yet, despite all this, Parasite won best picture and best director at the Academy Awards, apparently. What a surprise, the ‘best film of the year’ in their books is a turd in mine. I’ve bitched many times about film critics and awards and I’m going to do it again now because it’s such a joke. This time around, I found myself wondering what makes a film appealing to industry types and bigwigs, and I think the qualities they like are: it has to be artsy but not too artsy, and have mass appeal but not quite bubblegum pop mass appeal. If it’s too artsy or challenging, the phony artists don’t get it and feel dumb, and if it’s too easy to digest it doesn’t make them feel smart enough, so the films that typically win big tend to strike the blandest balance right in the middle — half-assed artsy and half-assed poppy. I think Parasite nailed that miserable balance so it’s no surprise it was such a darling this year. Remember when Roma was the big hit a year or two ago and everyone was creaming themselves over it, even though it was just a pretentious turd full of empty metaphors? And you notice how no one talks about Roma anymore? Yup, it will be the same way with Parasite in a year or two. These are not powerful, amazing films, leaving their marks on the annals of human history. They’re not the worst pieces of shit I’ve ever seen but ‘film of the year,’ they are not.
And don’t even start with “but the cinematography and shots are so beautiful.” Sure they were but great shots mean nothing to me without compelling story lines, believable characters, and convincing acting. Those are the fundamentals of a good film. Nail those and the rest is icing on the cake. Fuck them up and you’ve got nice icing on a steaming turd, and no one should be content eating a turd with icing on it.
crimson highway 