“Stain” seems to be a favourite metaphor for Bong Joon-ho. The South Korean writer-director uses the word twice as a figure of speech during an almost half hour conversation at La Plage Barrière Le Majestic — the private beach of the Majestic hotel in Cannes. It’s a couple of days before Parasite brings home the first Palme d’Or for him and Korea. Joon-ho vaguely remembers talking about the idea of the film to various people back in 2013, but can’t recall the exact moment when it sparked in his mind. “You can compare it to a stain on your pants. You go home and find it all of a sudden but don’t know where or how it came to be,” he says.
A still from ‘Snowpiercer’
2013 was when he was working on the post-production of his first English language film, Snowpiercer , which, although a sci-fi set on a train, was also about the rich and the poor. “So I was already enveloped in the idea of class difference,” says Joon-ho, of the thematic pivot of Parasite, the second film by the 49-year-old filmmaker to have made it to the Palme d’Or competition section of the Cannes Film Festival, after Okja in 2017.
Studying social divide
Parasite is an enigmatic film about the invisible class hierarchy bred by capitalism, about a poor and a rich family coming together in seeming consonance but eventually an overt conflict. Joon-ho sees kinship in Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. “The fact that so many filmmakers with completely different styles are focussing on the common idea of class difference shows how important it is in our generation,” he says. For him, cinema has always been a political and social critique. “Even when you watch a film about a man who lives in an isolated island by himself, it’s still going to have social or political commentary within.”
The cast of ‘Parasite’ with Bong Joon-Ho attend the photocall at the 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival
But, Parasite ’s serious subject notwithstanding, Joon-ho’s story-telling, as in his other films, remains immensely enjoyable. It is as funny as it is sad, as straightforward as it is edgy. There is a precariousness to the lives of his characters who come in various shades of grey. The rich are not quite villainous but surprisingly naive and gullible, the poor aren’t pious but unemployed, artful crooks. The humour might be quintessentially Korean but reaches out across cultures. Mid way, there is a sudden shift in the tone and tenor but, instead of dislodging the narrative, the unpredictability adds to the beguiling element at its core.
Once upon a stain
Does he find dark comedy a better way to address issues of social inequality? “There are films that are serious throughout the running time and have a strong social message and a political idea that they pitch for and I do really respect them. Personally, I can’t stand creating films that way. At times I follow conventions, at others I break conventions; I twist them in a strange way,” he says. There is an evident pride as he declares that he is an out and out genre filmmaker. “Without the excitement and joy that comes from genre I can’t create films,” he reveals.
A still from ‘Parasite’
Like his other films, the commentary or satire in Parasite starts seeping in slowly, in the audience, much after they would have left the theatre. “It’s almost like a stain on the body that you start to notice. That’s the kind of experience I dream for, for the audience,” he says, in the second evocation of a smirch or a smear.
Mind the gap
Since Snowpiercer had already dealt with the issue of class difference, Joon-ho wanted to portray it in a more intimate way in Parasite. In fact, after the big ticket, international outings with Snowpiercer and Okja, Parasite is being seen as Joon-ho’s return home : “I could add subtle nuances I know of in Korean culture and add a detailed cinematic touch to the story.”
The reality of class difference invariably leads to the hope of mobility. But isn’t his vision dystopian, in which the idea of mobility doesn’t exist? “The gap itself brings fear. What’s more frightening is that it’s not going to get any better. I feel that this is not going to improve in my son’s generation. I wanted to portray that sadness and fear and doubt… The sadness we feel as an audience is the last emotion I wanted to deliver as a filmmaker,” he says. He is not a pessimist but thinks it is very difficult to be hopeful either. “We calculated how long it would take for the poor in our film, to buy a rich man’s house. 547 years!” he says.
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Rapid Fire with Bong Joon-ho
Of superheroes and tight costumes
Joon-ho has never seen a Bond movie. But he is willing to try all genres of cinema except musicals, Westerns and superhero films. “There is a lot of beauty in the Westerns but I am not confident that I can pull it off,” he says. He has a lot of respect for the superhero movies, especially Captain America: Winter Soldier , but can’t do one because of a personal, psychological issue with skintight outfits. “When I see someone wearing a very tight-fitting outfit, I can’t handle it, I get very nervous,” he laughs. That said, the genre he would like to try the most are films that are set in isolated islands, like Castaway, Swept Away and Alone in the Pacific .
Movies after Netflix
A still from the Netflix Original film ‘Okja’
“In terms of actual creative process, it was great because Netflix gave me a 100 per cent creative control… It was when we were trying to discuss how to release Okja that there were a couple of issues. I knew from the beginning that it was a streaming company, but I tried to ensure that Okja would release on the big screen. We were able to release it in 150 theatres in Korea but I still wanted more. “I hope [Netflix] becomes more open to theatrical releases…As creators we all want the theatrical experience. It’s not just because there will be hundreds of people to see the film on the giant screen, but because it's the only platform where the viewer can’t press the stop button. Theatres preserve the time and the beat and the tempo that the filmmaker intended.”
Hitchcock for inspiration
He regards Kim Ki-young as a mentor. There are echoes of his 1960 film The Housemaid — “the two storey house with a staircase” — in Parasite . Then there are the crime films of Claude Chabrol, especially The Beast Must Die . “If you go all the way up on that lineage there would be [Alfred] Hitchcock. If I were to be classified as a film director who continues that lineage or history, I would be very happy.”
