Parasite

*Why are you hugging that stone? This? It keeps clinging to me.* I now understand all the praise and talk about this film. It’s well written and interlinks its themes symbiotically with the plot and its characters, it’s hard not to enjoy it. Though watching it in IMAX was wonderful and added to the intensity of the already quite tense plot twists. The cyclical nature of the plot making certain events reoccur in different characters, reflecting the irony of human propensities, just how greed and immorality are habits of human nature that are difficult to break. Class division and social hierarchy is the key theme explored in the most obvious means of the rich being juxtaposed with the impoverished, but also in more subtle ways is the use of smell and the reactions of the upper class family’s reaction, like contrasting the father’s (Song Kang-Ho) social awareness of not ‘crossing the line’ with his repugnant body odour from the basement were they dwell. This smell specifically brings out the lack of empathy and a contempt of the wealthy for the impoverished or just those less wealthy, In addition to the class divisions. Then of course there’s the scholar’s rock which was meant as a symbol of wealth and lust for money. This reflects the greed and chasing of money and wealth where not only do you end up losing more than you started with, but you also lose what’s most important at the end of the day, which one might usually take for granted, family. Intense emotional rollercoaster and full of surprises from a well devised narrative and a great cast to bring it all to life on screen, deserving of its accolades.