![]() ![]() He may merely be more observant and honest than most in the film world. It is not clear that Bong, who describes his background and present circumstances as thoroughly middle class, is particularly left-wing in his thinking. The attention certainly of most American filmmakers is firmly on themselves and their ethnic, gender and sexual identities. ![]() … I think we all have very sensitive antennae to class, in general.” Unfortunately, as the vast majority of films nominated for Academy Awards this year indicates, this is not the case. The film is “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.”īong told an interviewer last year, “I think all creators, all artists, and even just everyone, we are always interested in class, 24/7, I think it would actually be strange if we’re not. The director, in the film’s production notes, pointed to the fact that “in this sad world humane relationships … cannot hold.” Parasite, he explains, depicts “ordinary people” who descend into an “unavoidable” collision. The younger generation, in particular, feels a lot of despair.” ![]() The pampered rich, living in a cocoon, are utterly unprepared for the envy, anger and violence their dominance and arrogance provokes.īong told the Guardian recently that “Korea, on the surface, seems like a very rich and glamorous country now, with K-pop, high-speed internet and IT technology … but the relative wealth between rich and poor is widening. Bong’s film spells out, in a thoughtful and logical manner, the inevitable results of such a division: the impoverished will do almost anything to emerge from their nightmarish conditions, subsisting literally in the underworld. The climactic scene culminates in an eruption of class anger.Īs we noted in our original review, South Korea is one of the most socially unequal societies on the planet. Two families, the Kims and the Parks, who ordinarily live at the opposite ends of society, are suddenly brought into close proximity, with terrible consequences. Bong’s effort is a complex, troubling work about the social, economic and psychological disaster represented by the vast gap between rich and poor. It was markedly superior to every other film up for consideration. Parasite deserved to win the most serious awards. This new blacklisting goes virtually unreported in the American media. For that matter, Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York has not been able to find a distributor either. Moreover, Roman Polanski’s J’accuse ( An Officer and a Spy), a dramatized account of the Dreyfus affair in France in the 1890s, one of the best films of the year, did not receive an award or a nomination because the #MeToo campaign has intimidated prospective distributors and prevented its distribution in the US. Joaquin Phoenix ( Joker) and Renee Zellweger (Rupert Goold’s Judy) collected the best actor and best actress awards, with Brad Pitt ( Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood) and Laura Dern (Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story) winning in the best supporting actor and actress categories.Īs we noted in January, when the award nominations were announced: “Films that took a sharper look at American and global life, including Todd Haynes’s Dark Waters, Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, Gavin Hood’s Official Secrets, Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw and Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy, received no nominations.” Sam Mendes’ 1917 earned three awards (including veteran Roger Deakins for best cinematography), while Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari and Todd Phillips’ Joker each won two. It earned both the best picture and best international feature film awards, an unprecedented event, and Bong won the prizes for best director and best original screenplay. The South Korean film Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, won four major awards at the 2020 Academy Awards Sunday night in Los Angeles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |