In a hundred years time (and hey, let’s be optimistic and say humanity will get that far), what will 2019, cinematically, be defined by? Avengers: Endgame‘s quintessential swan-song for the current honeymoon period of superhero flick successes, perhaps? Joker‘s wildly controversial reception and subsequent financial triumphs, maybe? Cats for… meow?

Or will it be – and let’s be real: you already knew where I was going with this – Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s critically lauded masterwork and incredibly timely – oh-so 2019 – dissection of classism and poverty.

To make his point, Bong used stairs. Broadly, these stairs are used as a means of traversing the differing vertical plains of a structure (i.e. going up and down), and that’s all fine and dandy. More specifically, though, Bong’s stairs reflect classist oppression: and your position on them is reflective of your place in society.

Enter, the Kims, a poverty-stricken nuclear family frantically scraping for any job that will help them get by, often by any means necessary. Contrastingly, the Park family are rich and ignorant, blissfully unaware of both their subliminal prejudices against the poor and of the horrific conditions that many poor people endure. Separating the families is, funnily enough, a seemingly never-ending staircase, one whose roots in the grime are almost comically opposite to its pearly white peaks (Lee Ha-jun’s production design, here, is remarkable).

Gradually, the Kim family begin to ascend this staircase, one rung at a time, infiltrating the Park family residence by sneaking each other into various corners of the Park household (for example, the father, Kim Ki-taek, becomes the Park family’s designated driver). Quite often, this quest for work results in fights – albeit not physical or confrontational ones – with people of a similar class to the Kims, very rarely (scratch-that: never) with a mutually beneficial result.

And so in this sense, the eponymous Parasite of Parasite is poverty, and how it forces those under its grasp to fight and claw at each other like animals – savage, merciless and cold-blooded. The Kim family turn against the Park family’s former employees with, for the most part, merciless indifference, caring little for the lives they may have potentially ruined. But then, therefore, are they not the Parasites, too, leaching off everyone, from the poor folk they rob to the rich family they serve? However, if the Parks are the masters – are the Parks not, thus, the ultimate Parasite, milking their employees for every penny of labour they’re worth? HOWEVER… the Parks don’t act maliciously, so are they accidental Parasites? Subliminal ones? WHAT ARE THE ANSWERS???

Who knows? Certainly not Bong Joon-ho! The beauty of his script is that it offers no concrete solace. Everyone is at fault in his movie, yet no-one lacks humanity. The stellar cast ensures this, with Song Kang-ho’s stunning performance as the Kim-family father grounding the film with a full narrative arc and his younglings – Choi Woo-shik as Ki-woo, the son, and Park So-dam as Ki-jeong, the daughter – grounding the film further with their tragically youthful energy (really, though, everyone is superb, here: Park and Kim alike).

Yet for all the praise I have thrown towards Parasite thus far, I’ve yet to mention one teeny-tiny detail: this movie is hilarious, and intentionally so! The first half of Parasite, for all its precise social satire, straddles the dark comedy line beautifully, using it, rather aptly, to deconstruct the class system in play. Some other genres are intertwined in this also, ranging from the riveting mystery of the second half to some brief spurts of action and even the occasional wee-bit of horror (trust me when I say: you will know the shot).

Nonetheless: Parasite is a movie about stairs. The characters use stairs, the buildings feature stairs, the stairs are indicative of classist oppression: you know, the whole stair-y shebang. Arguably the film’s thematic peak is entirely stair focused, coming in the second half as the Kim family flee the Park family house in the dead of night. Any other director would show them leave the front door, waddle down the street a little and then, ultimately, hard-cut to the actual meat of the scene.

Not Bong. Instead, their painstaking descent from the pearly gates of heaven to the grimy streets of hell is chronicled, every second, with an almost purgatory-esque neverending staircase, one as infinitely burrowing as it is harrowingly watchful. The stairs are symbolic of the rigid class system that holds society hostage: an Everest you can try all your life to Summit, but will never securely reach the peak.

Please feel free to tell me what you thought of Parasite down below. Friendly discussion is encouraged!