South Korean director Bong Joon Ho is having quite a successful 2019.
He was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his latest feature, Parasite, a family drama/thriller that explores the social and economic divide between the rich and the poor. As of posting this article, the film currently sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Many are calling it the best film of the year and I fully endorse that statement.
The current attention on Bong Joon Ho’s artistic vision has come at the perfect time. He is a director not afraid to take risks, and not just for shock value. His stories serve a purpose. Since his first directing credit in 1994 (the short film White Man), Bong Joon Ho has become known for mixing darkly disturbing black humor with political and social consciousness, all rooted in a form of reality; whether it be in this universe or a parallel one. Sometimes it’s easier to watch one of Bong Joon Ho’s films and believe that the character conflicts and torturous situations are movie make-believe, but it’s hard to deny that unjust police interrogations, devastating effects of manmade environmental abuse, and hunger crises aren’t happening in real life. All of these things and more are still issues today.
In celebration of one of contemporary cinema’s boldest filmmakers, here are three classic Bong Joon Ho films to check out before you watch Parasite, in theaters this Friday.
Snowpiercer
In his first English-speaking feature film, Snowpiercer is a tour-de-force, a uniquely-crafted powerhouse of a movie that, like the fast-paced train it’s named after, charges ever-forward with such uncompromising force and vision that it leaves behind any semblance of what you might expect from a typical action flick.
Based on the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Snowpiercer tells the story of a failed global-warming experiment (performed in the year 2014) that turns the planet into a frozen icebox. We are introduced to the last of the human race, the poorest of which eat gelatin-like “protein blocks” and live under guard by the utilitarian government-state in the back of the train. This train has been making the same cyclical trip for the past seventeen years. Of course, this being the day that the lower class finally has had enough, they set in motion their plan: to charge through each car to make their way to the front of the train and free themselves from their enslavement. Snowpiercer‘s untraditional, stylized storytelling combines sci-fi expanse and art house intimacy, and will certainly entertain by making your head spin as it rockets past you.
Snowpiercer is available to stream on Netflix or Amazon.
Mother
This 2009 crime drama opens with a breathtaking wide shot of a woman (Hye-ja Kim) in an expansive wheat field. Her frail body starts to move in interpretive dance, a range of emotions running through her body and face. This woman is the titular Mother, and her story is one of perseverance. When her mentally delayed twenty-eight-year-old son, Yoon Do-joon (Won Bin), is framed for the murder of a local schoolgirl, his mother becomes his biggest and at times, only, support. Her quest for justice won’t stop until she proves he didn’t do it.
Her son’s unjust police interrogation and mental abuse echo situations we’ve seen in the media, with TV shows like “Making a Murderer” and “When They See Us” as prime examples of young men being taken advantage of by authority figures in their most vulnerable moment. Mother’s unwavering determination to protect and save her son takes her on a journey throughout the underbelly of South Korea, and she is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back.
Mother is available to stream on iTunes or Amazon.
Okja
Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg commanded the world’s attention when she delivered an impassioned speech at the UN Climate Summit on September 23, 2019, speaking about the dire effects of climate change and how its consequences are going to be very terrible, very soon. Thunberg has been praised by many for her wiser-than-her-years prognosis of the future but others, including the President of the United States, continued to downplay and even mock Thunberg’s compassionate pleas. The world needs to pay attention to young women with something to say, and Bong Joon Ho knows this. His protagonist in Okja is a preteen named Mija (Seo-hyun Ahn), a headstrong girl who stops at nothing when her best friend – a genetically-modified, government-loaned super piglet named Okja – is taken away from her to face an unknown future.
Super piglets were thought to be the answer to the global hunger crisis, a revolution in the livestock industry. The brainchild of the Mirando meat corporation’s CEO Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), the super piglets were to be loaned out to farmers across the world and in 10 years’ time, returned to Mirando to be reproduced and ultimately slaughtered. At a time when environmental activism and ecological awareness is at an all-time high, Bong Joon Ho’s Okja is a powerful look at the true cost of consumer greed and capitalism.
Okja is available to stream on Netflix.
