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.
