Parasite (2019) is a gory Korean psychological thriller, so perhaps not the review you were expecting to read in our regular Older Tenants Voice movie review column?
We’re reviewing this movie not only because it’s an unmissable masterpiece of cinema, collecting 4 Oscars, but because it’s probably the most relevant film about older people’s housing issues ever produced.
Parasite begins in the slums of a nameless city, where the Kim family live in a stinky, bug infested basement below the street level. The family have skills, the children out of school, the older parents working-aged, but still they struggle to make ends meet. It seems like no amount of ‘life hacks’ or street smarts will get help them rise above this lowest station in life.
Their luck appears to change when a family friend gifts them a ‘scholars stone’ – a chunk of rock resembling the peak of a mountain, said to bring good fortune. At first it seems like a useless object – if only it were food!
But being owners of this tiny piece of land – the top of a mountain – seems to grant them a conditional access to the world above. The son gets a job tutoring for the wealthy Park family, who live in multi-story home at the top of the hill above the city. The white-lie that he is a university student seems fair enough – he has the skills for the job. As do his sister, mother and father, all skilled both in their new jobs, as well as the deceptions used to get them the roles.
But they moved up from conning the gullible and excessively rich, to cons that really hurt other working class people.
They learn that they aren’t the only family eking out a subterranean existence by working for the Park family, living invisibly in the shadows while the Parks are bathed in sunshine.
The necessity of a decent home, and what it costs to live in luxury, is brought up in visceral ways throughout the film. The pervasive smell of the basement almost breaks through the barrier of the screen.
Indignities of being old and poor, being fired for bad health, being invisible and redundant, are painfully illustrated by the family in the basement.
What this film really does with stunning clarity is to show the corruption of social inequality, how workers are pitted against each other instead of against the mega-rich – until something finally breaks.
It’s one of many Korean productions that explore this theme, including Snowpiercer, Squid Game and Train to Busan, but it’s probably the best of a stunning bunch.
Watching international films like this is a potent reminder that such issues of housing inequality exist all over the world, and that blaming other workers for the problem only leads to worse horrors.
Parasite is streaming on SBS OnDemand. With films like this freely available, it’s no surprise that the One Nation party want to kill SBS all together!