‘Parasite’ Winning Best Picture: What Will it Mean Moving Forward?
The experience of watching the world collectively discover (and acknowledge) Bong Joon-Ho as a cinematic staple this award’s season was slightly unnerving even as it was satisfying. He’s a man who’s been behind the camera and script of eight feature films, some in English, some in Korean, some split. It was the year 2000 when his first was released — it was called Barking Dogs Never Bite, a frightening and unsettling dark comedy about a man going mad at the sound and sight of yapping pups. It came out the same year my brother was born and that I was but a wee two-year-old; those significantly older than I feared the internet would become rendered useless by this thing called the Y2K bug; and a young Kobe Bryant won his first NBA title. It took the United States nine years to acquire release rights for the film, a time frame in which Bong made and released three more films – they were called Memories of Murder, The Host, and Tokyo!. Though perhaps it just took the U.S. nine years to try.
Nevertheless, it’s taken much of the film-going public – and, innately, their consciences – an even more formidable 20 years since Bong’s filmmaking birth to recognize his mastery and his impact on the medium. He’s just that, a master, only just now one that has been validated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with four Oscars. One of them, as it so happens, is simply the most exciting, shocking, and monumental statuette ever handed out by a mostly white, mostly male contingent.
Three of the four Oscars were awarded for best original screenplay, best foreign -- er, international feature -- and best director. The fourth -- the award for best picture -- comes with a significance of titanic proportions. No, Bong isn’t the first nor most recent international filmmaker to win best director. Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu have all been crowned recently, with Cuarón and Iñárritu both winning twice and all three having won in the last six years. But Bong’s film is, somehow and quite notably, the first foreign language feature to be recognized with the night’s top prize. It’s a long overdue nod, and there have been a bevy of capable and deserving films nominated in year’s past (Roma just nearly missed out in the events of last year’s Green Book debacle). But the win – boy, this win – has the potential to be a vital step forward for an Academy that has long been considered pigeonholing themselves by their preferences. You ask, “War? (war.) What is good for?” and I respond, usually, “well, for winning an Oscar.”
Which is a weird instinct to have. This, of course, is in reference to the fact that, heading into Sunday, the overwhelming favorite to dominate the ceremony was Sam Mendes’ epic, gimmicky 1917, a film that unfolds under the illusion that it was filmed in one continuous shot. (I guess they want you to disregard the significant and presumably lengthy blackout a character experiences in its midsection.) Alas, it accomplished no such pinnacle feat; it merely won the technical battles, falling short of winning the evening’s war. It won for visual effects, sound mixing, and the only win it truly deserved, for the cinematography by the storied and brilliant Roger Deakins.
It was nominated for 10 Oscars, though, so what’s a cast and crew to feel, to make of such a “failure?” Three wins is traditionally a cause for celebration, but considering the awards season hype surrounding Mendes and his film, it likely exits the chaotic circuit a mild disappointment, if not one of a bit stronger tinge.
And it’s hard to call such an accomplished film a disappointment or a “failure,” simply because it did, in fact, accomplish so much. There are better movies that walked away with less victories (Little Women) and some with none at all (The Irishman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Marriage Story, Ad Astra, and even Avengers: Endgame), but it always felt like, regardless of its shortcomings, it was an “Oscar movie,” a now tired and overused phrase to describe safe bets.
But you almost don’t want to even mention its involvement in the evening’s unfolding because that very series of events now belongs, in joint custody, to Bong and his film. An awards ceremony he once called “very local” has since awarded his masterpiece its number-one, exalted, dreamiest, shiniest honor. General reception of the win might almost lead you to believe that the Academy has righted all past wrongs.
I encourage you to do no such thing; at least proceed with caution. Don’t automatically see Parasite’s win and the nonsensically belated victory for a foreign film as a bellwether for future selections by the Academy. This is, after all, that same group that, yes, is working to diversify its ranks, but is also, as mentioned, still overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. This is still the same voting body that gave Crash the best picture Oscar in 2006 over Brokeback Mountain. It’s also the same Academy that saw Green Book a fitting (and harmless) bet to serve as the de facto representative for an otherwise marvelous year in film – more on that in a moment – while Roma sat right there, ripe for the Academy’s plucking. And it’s the same Academy that was only spared the #OscarsSoWhite treatment this year because the public had used it once already, and overusing a hashtag is unoriginal. As if rewarding the quasi-inverse of Driving Miss Daisy and another entry in the white savior film canon (in 2018, for crying out loud) is this revelatory departure from its pale tendencies.
I do, however, hope we can revel in this, that we can hope the Parasite win actually indicates that a victor like Green Book is more of an anomaly than viewers and film lovers were initially led to believe. For the New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that perhaps Peter Farrelly’s faulty road trip tale “represented more of a last gasp than a serious retrenchment.” Perhaps Parasite was the perfect film to now represent the ability for foreign films to conquer a largely “local” ceremony; as the Los Angeles Times’ film critic Justin Chang put it, “this may be the greatest movie ever made about, and for, a house divided.” Here’s looking at you, Academy.
In the aftermath of such a pivotal, overwhelming, joyful triumph, not just for foreign film, but for the betterment of the film industry moving forward, Parasite’s impact is unparalleled. Or should I say, it can be unparalleled. Those who have seen it know the impact it had on them and can hope for a similar impact it will have on unsuspecting future viewers. Fitting, as it received a $500,000 post-Oscars boost at the box office the very day after it won big.
Sure, this isn’t necessarily new – people going to the movies the day after a film is named “best movie,” by all accounts – but people didn’t drop everything to go see Birdman or The Artist. They’re dropping everything to go see Parasite because it’s “new.” Well… except it’s not; it’s as new as Birdman or The Artist was, as new as any other film nominated alongside it on Feb. 9. I’ve also heard that Parasite is “different.” I think it’s become customary to call films with words appearing along the bottom of the screen throughout “different” or “unique” or “interesting.” Incidentally, all of those things are true about Parasite. But it’s not “different,” “unique,” or “interesting” because of the language it’s written in.
There’s optimism to be lumped into the positive repercussions of its win just as there is and will still be a creeping, overarching pessimism. One must acknowledge how long this actually took to happen when parsing it all up, as well as dissecting what that might mean. Is this merely a merited gesture but not a significant indication that a change is gonna come? Do we just reset next season by adorning a Green Book or a The King’s Speech, both not necessarily outrageously pitiful but certainly not remarkable nor trailblazing?
Better yet, do the Oscars have to be important and groundbreaking every year? Your friend the film buff might say yes; if they’re at all like me, they believe in the process of the Oscars, even if it does occasionally serve as the temporary bane of my existence every year. The process of the Oscars, as it were, is to honor the year’s best in the medium, a task it has often failed to do, and even when it does finds itself in a sticky situation. Thank God they got the envelope right this time.
Parasite, if nothing else, at least pushes the Academy’s envelope. It beckons them to not resort to being a one-trick pony, not to make its honoring a one-time achievement in exhibiting intelligence. As Jane Fonda held her breath before announcing to the world that perhaps something had changed for the better, so did we. We’re still catching our breath, but in an ideal world, Parasite’s moment is the only time we’ll have to, and makes the feeling so ordinary that it isn’t even taking away our breath as much as it is rewarding our patience. I worry that I should plan on seeing another Bohemian Rhapsody or Darkest Hour competing and thriving at next year’s Oscars, but I pray that I can plan on this moment not serving as a fleeting one, rather that it is a bellwether. But sometimes the best plan is no plan, no plan at all. After all, “With no plan, nothing can go wrong and if something spins out of control, it doesn’t matter.”