Brief reviews of: Parasite, Knives Out, Witcher, and Messiah. Rise of Skywalker will come later. Spoilers follow but if you care you can probably just skip the parts for shows you have seen.
Parasite - wears its themes on its sleeves, but its horror so that’s expected. Frankly I expected there to be a big twist that people were literally insects of some sort, so that the second half twist was “only” a third parasitical family was somewhat of a letdown. (The director had a message before the movie to not talk about the second half of the movie to anyone lest you spoil the surprise. I was torn between thinking the warning was a bad spoiler in itself, and being impressed at the way that raised tension and expectation in the middle of the movie.)
Still for all its obviousness, it’s really good. Exploring themes of class stratification with insect imagery, our emotions about how we smell, and the famous line “she’s nice *because* she’s rich” calls back to the founding themes of this blog. And there are few things more fun than a good scam movie with charismatic con artists, which the first half certainly is.
Possibly the most poignant part of the movie is that the big plan of the scammers is to… become servants of a rich family. That’s it, that’s their big payday, just the privilege to drive and houseclean for others. (The movie asserts that this very poor family who can’t all even fold boxes correctly would all be very good at these jobs, if given the chance.)
The last five minutes of the movie go on too long, however. It would have been best to just end with the father running into the wild. By continuing on the epilogue raises more questions than it answers. (Why did the police not search the bunker after they interrogated the son? Can’t the father just… leave, whenever he wants?)
I absolutely laughed out loud at the meta-level line, repeated by the main character “It’s very metaphorical.” And god, the shots of the family running along with the rain down the length of the city were gorgeous. I could just watch that for an hour.
Knives Out - is making this quite a “eat the rich” movie season. There’s no denying the characters are all entertaining, and the plot is as well constructed as a murder mystery can be these days. Rian Johnson definitely succeeded in his homage to Agatha Christie, though I liked his homage to Raymond Chandler better.
Praises being said… it’s a muddled mess by the end. We’re supposed to view the patriarch’s decision to leave everything to the caregiver as the ultimate judgment of moral quality. Money has decided immigrants are good, not rich hangers on. Except the patriarch is an asshole. Why would anyone take his judgment seriously as an ethical matter?
And the first half of the movie gets much of its politically tinged entertainment by showing how all the rich people, including the pretentious detective hilariously overplayed by Daniel Craig, ignore the help, and therefore miss important clues. You’ve got the whole scene with her destroying evidence as the detectives tromp around staring off into the distance about how Meaningful everything is. Which is funny! But then ruined by the reveal that “nope, the southern good old boy was perfectly aware of what was going on the whole time” and the immigrant was so careless as to have blood on her shoes. I would be disappointed in a final half hour that so completely contradicted the first ⅔ of a movie, except I’ve seen The Last Jedi.
(Another example of mess to add is just going over the character of Linda, who is portrayed as the most righteous of the children - she has somewhat built her own business, and she is not drawn into attacking her siblings, she doesn't threaten or try to murder anyone, and she gets the last shot of looking somewhat victorious near the end. Yes her victory, as she deciphers her father's letter. But let's remember: her father has just died, her son is being taken to jail for murder, and she found out her husband is cheating on her. This should be the most devastated character of the entire cast. But the camera does not understand her agony anymore than JK Rowling understands just how bad a deal she gave Andromeda Tonks.)
Marriage Story - is really great acting by two leads, and incredibly painful. I wavered between "not being able to care about the problems of these two very rich people" and "being upset at the ways one or the other breaks the moral compact." In the end it seems less a movie about present conflict, and more the shock and awe of finding your past recontextualized, with agreements and shared views you believed in apparently never held by the other (or the other lying to deny those past implicit agreements in order to win the present fight.) It's a terrifying amount of existential dread when you try to ponder "what really happened" before the movie started.
Witcher - is perfectly good and you should watch it if you’re here to kill time. People treat the fact that the three stories are happening in different time periods as some sort of spoiler, but it’s not a big reveal or twist, it’s just part of the context that you slowly realize over time.
The overriding theme of the franchise is that “monsters are women who have been abused by the patriarchy and are defending themselves.” This theme is repeated to the point of predictability. But for all that, I don’t know why it’s been so slammed by critics.
Warning: you will never get Toss a Coin out of your head, till the end of days. (Though the song’s massive fandom seems to miss how incredibly ironic it is, being a song entirely of lies, played over a scene about cruelty and lies.)
Messiah - another Netflix series, though less popular. Any mainstream story about a modern messiah figure is going to try to play it ambiguously, with enough evidence left for the audience to decide they are truly divine, or just a hoax on their own. I’m really tired of that. It’s possible the writers of this show were going for the same thing… except they failed. The events depicted in the show veer well into this “this guy is led by god” territory. There’s no room to think it’s just a Russian hoax or whatever. Which was good! I like the trope being played straight, even if unintentionally.
But instead of the god-figure’s mission, the show mostly focuses on people caught up in His vortex, whose world has changed and is changing, and they are still stuck on their personal demons. Which is in fact the good art I want. Unfortunately no one’s acting in the show is really up to the level the concept asks for, which is a bit of a letdown.
Also the final episode is annoyingly deus ex machina. Not from the actual deus even. But for a show focusing on security agencies, that show how limited they are in their ability to do what they want (all the CIA agent can do is shuttle between different police departments. She can’t with a click of her fingers make a black ops team appear and do her bidding)... for some higher up to order a missile strike on an Israeli diplomatic plane out of nowhere, was pretty unbelievable.
Is the movie asserting that the Kims would be good at these jobs, or that the jobs don't require as much skill as the Parks pretend in the first place? Ki-woo tells Da-hye that vigor is more important than precise answers; Yeon-gyo openly tells Ki-jeong to count the grueling task of... attending Da-song's birthday party... as one of her lessons.
ReplyDelete1angelette asked: Is the movie asserting that the Kims would be good at these jobs, or that the jobs don't require as much skill as the Parks pretend in the first place? Ki-woo tells Da-hye that vigor is more important than precise answers; Yeon-gyo openly tells Ki-jeong to count the grueling task of... attending Da-song's birthday party... as one of her lessons.
ReplyDeleteYou’re right that how good the Kims are at these jobs is a more complicated question than I gave in the short summary. “Kevin” and “Jessica” are indeed scamming and not providing the actual quality services they claim to, both in their fake credentials and their entire lack of expertise in the field. We see both of them basically make up teaching methods just to impress the mom. However, on a deeper level, the mom doesn’t really care and just wants people who know how to handle her kids (Min was not any better at getting results out of Da-hye), and the tutors do that quite satisfactorily to what the parents want. The movie is stating that this dance of credentials-over-results is just what rich families actually do with their tutors.
And the dad really is a good driver, the mom really is a good housekeeper.
And even if they are not perfect, my point was that this family does not suffer from typical portrayals of laziness or incompetence. They show up on time, they are respectful and obedient to their employers, etc. While we get initial hints of “maybe they will steal the house” this doesn’t actually go anywhere. They are not poor people who are incapable of doing the work society wants out of them - their real problem is they live in a world where “there are 500 applications for every security guard opening”. (Okay apparently one of the family can’t fold pizza boxes. The movie somewhat contradicts itself here.)
To the broader question, I’ve seen commentators take the point “she’s nice *because* she’s rich” as justification for everything the Kims do. That the Kims, as the lower class protagonists, are automatically righteous no matter how much they: lie, steal, get other people fired, and even murder. That terrible behavior “because we are oppressed” is automatically moral.
This is not true. Their actions are in fact terrible and not to be praised. However we should not look at this as a moral failing of their individual character, but a logical result of their circumstances. If you want less “lying and conning to get a job” then don’t make it necessary to pass 500 applications to get a middle class life. And don’t trust a rich person who has never had to make any of those choices to do any better when the chips are down.