The Miraculous Power of a Perfect Montage
Friday, January 24, 2020 at 8:00PM 
Sometimes you can forget why you love cinema so much. The world gets you down and it's like nothing can bring you up to the light, rolling clouds of cinematic mediocrity make it even difficult to remember there was a light to start with. Before you know it, going to the movies is more like a chore than a pleasure. If you give in to despondency, those belabored affirmations of the death of cinema may start to ring true. But are they?
No. We know this because even in the darkest times, there are small miracles that prove cinema is alive and thriving. Parasite is one of those miracles.
Allow me to elaborate on a bit of recent personal history. At the beginning of last summer, after hitting an emotional roadblock and getting to a point I couldn't function anymore, I finally looked for professional help...
Soon, I discovered that, like other people in my family's history, I am clinically depressed. The overwhelming despair I've been feeling since I was 17 finally had a name and some medication to go along with it. That said, one of the most alarming side effects of the medication turned out to be something unexpected and deeply unwanted. I was no longer able to cry at films, something I did before quite often.
It wasn't just that I couldn't cry, it was as if a wall had been built between the silver screen and me. My passion for cinema, something that had been so central in preserving my sanity, was suddenly dampened by my quest for emotional stability. What a bitter trade-off. Still, my present work revolves around cinema and there's always work to do and press screenings to attend.
In the middle of September, as the embers of summer died down, something changed. A miracle happened and its name was Parasite. The week before Bong Joon-ho's latest masterpiece opened in Portuguese cinemas, I was able to attend a morning screening for film critics at a tiny, but beautiful, theatre. In a dark room with only half a dozen other writers attending, I watched and was impressed by the craft onscreen. Like most of my cinematic experiences at the time, the film elicited a cold sort of respect at most. It was impressive, but I wasn't moved. At least, not at first.
Then it changed. [SPOILER ALERT] After the youngest members of the poor Kim family have successfully infiltrated the house of the rich Parks and ousted their driver, it's time to secure jobs for their parents. As Jaeil Jung's melodic Belt of Faith starts playing in the soundtrack, Bong lets us see the entirety of the Kim's scheme in a heady montage. It lasts around seven minutes and encompasses the father getting a job as a driver and the downfall of the Park's current housekeeper. She falls victim from a convenient peach allergy whose symptoms, plus some hot-sauce adjacent showmanship, make it look like she has tuberculosis. [/SPOILER]
Even trying to describe the perfection of this montage is difficult, for its genius defies verbal communication. There's such precision in the way Bong constructs the sequence that it boggles the mind. Each motion seems reflected by a later gesture, be it a tracking movement of the camera or an actor's sleight of hand. Dialogues interact across time and space within the narrative's internal logic, but it all flows with organic perfection as we see it unravel. It's all in beat and synch to the score whose classical sound doesn't hide its bombastic energy. All I know is that when Park So-dam softly blows on a fuzzy peach, I felt something break in me.
I cried tears of joy and awe at the amazing miracle of cinema. It was overwhelming in the best of ways, like a fortress of emotional apathy crumbling when faced with the glory of Art. Suddenly, flashes of different moments of similar cinematic genius crossed my mind. The Piano's seaside concerto, Toni Erdmann's karaoke and Moulin Rouge!'s "Come What May," Zhang Ziyi through bamboo leaves, the fireworks behind DiCaprio in Titanic and Jeanne Dielman's schnitzel, Moonlight's kiss and Visions of Gideon, the dream ballets of the 40s and 50s, Citizen Kane's cockatoo and Dziga Vertov's editing.
Reader, I was reenacting the opera scene from Birth, remembering why I love cinema so much. Because of this I'll forever be indebted to Bong Joon-ho and his masterful feature. In just the moment I needed it, Parasite showed me the light again, parting the clouds. It may sound silly and it's almost certainly hyperbolic, but Parasite is the kind of film that makes cinema worth loving. And to me, in times of despair, cinema is one of the things that makes life worth living.
Reader Comments (9)
Terrific piece on a terrific movie
Beautiful words Claudio.
The facial expression of Song Kan-Ho is the perfect ending to the scene. I remember the crowd laughing out hard at that moment.
This and the family Park back-to-home scene are the ones it stuck most in my head.
Superb text!!!
I enjoyed Parasite, I admire the class topics that the film presents. Although, some parts of the screenplay were hard to believe in.
Your text, Cláudio, pays a beautiful homage to the film and to cinema. Thanks for writing it.
What a superb piece! It speaks of that most vital yet intangible relationship that we share with the audiovisual medium... a personal connect. Even as a communal experience in a cinema hall, a film or one of its moment speaks directly to you, just you. When that happens, truly like Kidman in that terrific Birth scene, you and the screen are one by virtue of that which only you have experienced. The beauty of such moments and experience is that they exist beyond simplistic classifications of a good or bad movie, at once dismantling the pretensions of excessive intellectualization of any film. For example, I may not be a crazy fan of Parasite as most of the world seems to be and I may have concerns with the very politics of the film that has been lauded across the board even as I cannot deny the film and Joon-Ho the mastery of filmmaking that exists in every frame of Parasite, but frankly none of this matters to the feelings that the author of this piece experienced. And i have no business to convince anyone otherwise.
You are a writer to be treasured!
Claudio ! How beautiful ... such a wonderful passionate piece - thank you.
Now I really can't wait to see Parasite next week (many of my friends where in ore) and it gives me SO MUCH HOPE - especially after my sheer disappointment for the senseless and in a way self-aggrandising "Once Upon a Time..." I saw yesterday... it left me wondering deeply, if my taste and perception of good tasteful entertainment really changed that much from what the world wants right now ...
This is a beautiful and moving article. Thank you for writing and for sharing!
This is a beautifully written, immensely affecting piece, Claudio. Thank you for your candor.
Thank you all for the lovely words. I'm incredibly grateful for them and can't thank you enough.
Abzee -- That's a beautiful way of describing that connection between viewer and film. I appreciate your moving verbalization of that intangible feeling.
Martin -- I hope you enjoy Parasite when you finally see it. Good luck.