Month: November 2019

REVIEW: Parasite

/ Ivan Strong Moore / 2 Comments

Tens of millions of television viewers recently rejoiced at the big screen return of a silver screen favorite. For four years, fans just couldn’t wait to once again walk down that gravel path to Downton Abbey. It’s a classic story of a society in transition and the ways progress affects or stifles characters throughout the different classes. Downton’s following were swept up in the romance of the extravagant traditions of the upstairs family and rooted wholeheartedly as the downstairs characters attempted to climb their way out to various success.

In all honesty, the film installment of Downton Abbey served more as a special episode of the show than it did a movie that might make awards moves, but a similar story is already being dubbed one of the year’s best! Imagine if Downton Abbey was set in modern day South Korea and helmed by one of world cinema’s most creative filmmakers. Well, that’s what you get in the genre bending heist-suspense-thriller-horror-political-comedy, Parasite.

Parasite Phone GIF

There are many reasons that Parasite is getting its praise. The movie excels in the major components to any movie: acting, writing, editing, sound, cinematography, etc. What makes it so uniquely special, though, is the vision and voice of its director. It is almost always hard to say what genre Ho is playing with in any given movie, and he often covered several. What’s more important is what he’s trying to say and how he’s using the medium to say it.

Like Downton, Ho often focuses on themes of class, exploitation, and society’s woes. In Snowpiercer, he depicts a future where the survivors of a global freeze are confined to a moving train with each car representing different class positons. In Okja, Ho tells the tale of the daughter of a lower-class farmer who raises and then must protect a genetically engineered future pig. Most would say these are strange movies, but there really is something unique and gripping about Ho’s vision. They manage to be weird without being inaccessible. They manage to have a dark edge but with a light of life. They exist in fictional universes but somehow evoke extremely real feelings. With Parasite, though, he’s doing something a little different. It features characters, a setting, and a premise that’s fairly normal. Yet, in perfect Ho fashion, the film manages to be anything but.

Parasite Jessica Song GIF

Parasite follows one of the downstairs families of South Korea. They live in a subterranean apartment where they fold pizza boxes for grocery money and huddle into the highest corners for just a taste of nearby WiFi. Fortunes change when the son is hired as a tutor by a very upstairs family and from there Ho takes his audience through somewhat of a genre obstacle course. This is just not a film you can stay ahead of. There’s no typical roadmap to follow through its narrative. In the year of our Lord 2019, that is such a rare gift.

What you will feel throughout the film is Ho’s ability to reach into your body and spark a reaction. It’s a visual medium but he orchestrates a sensory experience that you can smell and feel. It’s beyond the visceral feeling of texture and stretches into your involuntary bodily reactions to make you feel what the characters are feeling. At times, I was relaxed and confident. Ten minutes later I was suspicious and nervous. A few seconds pass and I’m breathless and shaking, and as it continues I’m uncontrollably sad.

I was exhausted. Ho wants you to feel what it is like to be those downstairs people trying to climb. It is reminiscent of another incredible film recently released from South Korea, Chang-Dong Lee’s Burning. Both films highlight a younger generation of South Koreans experiencing an ever expanding gap in the classes, and both films do so by focusing on what the lives of the lower class are truly worth. They explore the highs and lows of a life lived at the bottom of the stairs.

Parasite Peach GIF

The downstairs family gets so close to the life of the upstairs family, but it is all an illusion. What is a minor inconvenience to our upstairs characters, alters the life of everyone in the downstairs community. At the peak of their maneuvering to ascend into greater flourishing, the downstairs family feel a small measure of control and power only to have their schemes descend into pure chaos. The upstairs family maintained power the entire time. Our protagonists were only ever one squish or slap away from losing connection to resources and a better life. Thus is the life of a parasite.

*I’d love to say more, but I don’t want to ruin the experience. Snowpiercer, Okja, and Burning are all currently streaming on Netflix and including Parasite should all be watched with viewer discretion as ratings vary. But they should be watched!

REVIEW: Jojo Rabbit

/ Ivan Strong Moore / Leave a comment

There is nothing funny about the Holocaust or the Hitler Youth or any of our current expressions of white supremacy. And yet, in the midst of the great divisions we feel in our world today, comes Jojo Rabbit, a satirical comedy from Taika Waititi who is known for comedy bangers like What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok.  He’s also known for pulling out the comedy in tragedy like he does in the acclaimed Hunt for the Wilderpeople. This is what he does with Jojo. Waititi tackles a horrific subject through comedy hoping that the laughs will keep our eyes locked on something we often turn a blind eye to.

Jojo is a young German boy who goes away to Hitler Youth camp as World War II is coming to an end. Even in the world of young Nazis in bloom, it’s impossible to escape the clichés of youth. Jojo is starving for acceptance, eager to prove his masculinity, and regularly bullied by the older boys. These are just distractions, though, because Jojo is there to learn how to be the best Nazi he can be. He’s swimming in a pool of indoctrination and sponging up every drop. This is a lot of pressure for little Jojo, but he finds strength in his imaginary friend, a version of Hitler formed in his young mind played by the film’s New Zealander director.

Waititi as Hitler GIF

In the role, Waititi gets to pinpoint the absurdity of hate. He’s not just playing Hitler, he is playing the personification of Jojo’s learned racism and fascism. He is Jojo’s sinful nature and he, along with the film as a whole, is brilliant. Calling out the senselessness of white supremacy is easy. People do it all the time on Twitter with short, jabby quips accompanied by the perfect animated GIFs of Kermit the frog sipping tea. Waititi doesn’t leave us with an impactful jab, though. With Jojo Rabbit, he offers a solution, because a quarter of the way through the film something unexpected happens.

In order to talk about some of the power of Jojo Rabbit, we’ve got to dig into spoiler territory. I’m going to spoil a major plot point, but I promise, even if you know it, there are plenty of twists and turns in the film. It is an important point to help draw out the film’s larger themes and, might just be a selling point if you haven’t seen it and you really should! Regardless, if you want to go into Jojo blind, stop reading now and come back!

Jojo Rabbit War GIF

Circumstances lead to Jojo being forced to stay home from camp where he discovers a young Jewish woman hiding in the walls. Jojo is terrified. He’s chilled to the bone, his veins streaming with the power of an irrational fear of the other. This fear was implanted in him by the counselors at camp and the national pride in the air. It is a fear that could only exist and be made stronger by Jews being an absolute mystery. As long as Jojo doesn’t come in contact with an actual Jew, he can maintain the picture of a hellish demon that has been fashioned in his mind. But then there is Elsa, played with such power by Leave No Trace’s Thomasin McKenzie. She’s thin from eating scraps, and dirty from hiding in the walls, but she is human and Jojo is now locked in the house with her. Proximity will now slowly, but surly, dismantle fear.

This is why Christ dined with sinners, touched lepers, and pushed his disciples into Gentile communities. Fear and hatred can create seemingly insurmountable distance between people, but that vitriol can only survive as long as that distance in maintained. What do you mean that a Samaritan can be good? How can it be that Paul, the ultimate Jewish leader who sparked such violence towards the Gentiles, would be their pied piper of salvation? Fear feeds on the unknown, and the best way to combat that is by making the unknown known. Being locked in proximity to Elsa gives Jojo a chance to see she doesn’t have horns, her heart is actually kind, and yes, she does bleed the same color red. It can be simple or easy for us to let go of distance and separation, but the problem is that fear and hate don’t so easily let go of us.

Just when the disciples were starting to warm up to the idea of the Gospel being for everyone, even the Gentiles, here comes Peter gripped with fear. In Galatians, Paul catches Peter engaging in conduct that “was not in step with the truth of the gospel,” and he is furious. Paul had been working tirelessly to close the distance between these people groups and Peter was driving the wedge again. Peter’s fear wasn’t letting go, and neither does Jojo’s. The more Elsa makes him smile, imaginary Hitler begins to frown. Waititi’s Fuhrer begins acting less like a cartoon character and more like the man of the news reels and propaganda.

Jojo Rabbit depicts the fight for a young boy’s very soul, and, in many ways, the fight for ours as well. Every laugh is followed by a cringe of reality knowing how many adorable little kids, and Jojo actor Roman Griffin Davis is adorable, have been, and are being, turned into monsters with time-tested methods. It is an absurd film, but one that is going to pull you through a gallery of tears. There are tears of laughter, tears of sadness, tears of pain, and tears of great, personal conviction. The film asks what devils of ignorance and fear are living in your own heart while it walks a very fine line between making fun of the hypocrisy and making light of the horrors. This line, however, is walked with a hope that maybe one day we can make hate a figment of our imagination.