We live in a world where our perception of the real-life issues is very much influenced by what we see on our screens. Easy and affordable access to smart devices along with movies and TV shows websites has made it possible for almost everyone to watch whatever they want to. Having a Netflix, HBO, Prime-video etc. account has also become a trend which has further pushed a lot of people to get lost in the world of TV. We have been watching TV for a long time with everyone having his own taste of the genre. We have had motivational movies with strong moral messages to romantic, comic and historic etc. all of which influenced us in one way or another.
The 2019 South Korean Dark Comedy Thriller Movie Parasite is a little different, it can be said to have a little of everything. This movie took over the cinematic world by winning 4 academy awards in a night but that is not all, it has won many other awards such as the Palme d’Or. The movie won The Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture and Best Foreign Language film whilst it was also nominated for Best Film Editing and Best Production Design. Unlike the average movies the director Bong Joon-Ho has picked a very real life like situation to demonstrate and highlight the dilemmas in a common man’s life under the Capitalist system. The movie has a deep meaning wrapped inside a hidden message for the society, while the director constantly uses objects and scenes as metaphors or just to imply irony, he has very beautifully demonstrated the reality of the framework of Capitalism and also portrayed some of the injustices happening in the corrupt and money hungry, power run systems in the society.

The story basically revolves around two families with different standing in the socio-economic framework of the society. One family is ridden with poverty and they have great ambitions to escape it while the other family is on the other end of the food chain and arebourgeois, with little awareness of the life outside their bubble of wealth and power. The poor and the rich families come in to contact after the boy from the poor family gets a job at the rich family’s house and refers his other family members for other jobs around the house. According to methe emphasis was laid on the fact that the rich people have grown dependent on their wealth to get everything their way that they had to hire someone poor for their day to day tasks such as driving and doing the dishes. While on the other hand the poor people in order to escape the poverty were shown to be driven by their greed because of which they are not afraid of doing something out of the book or their greed has led them to switch the long road of hard work with shortcuts of deceit and trickery. Because of this it also very hard to select sides in the movie. The poor boy is shown to be very intelligent but because of the corrupt system he is unable to do something successful to pull his family out of the poverty. Over and over again in the movie it has been shown that the rich people were able to smell poverty and especially the rich guy refers to it as the smell on the subway as that is the most probable place where the two classes are that close to smelling each other. I don’t feel that this movie portrayed anyone part of the society as evil but it played with the whole idea and the realities of the system which has integrated in us so much that we are now able to identify someone’s standing in the society just by the way they smell.

We need more movies like this as it has put mirror in front of everybody’s face, not to criticize any particular group but just for us to have a taste of the reality we live in. We don’t notice these things in our daily life yet we are driven by them. All actions and movements are to stay on the ‘right’ (financially sound) rung of the ladder. Along with this reality check this movie gives out some clear and helpful messages such as be more aware of the world you live in, the result of success through shortcuts instead of hard work is short lived and do your work yourself.