The film Parasite won four awards at this year’s Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. When I heard that a Korean film won the first Oscar, I watched the movie again. A closer look at the film ensured that the depictions and expressions that I missed the first time caught my eye. Also, the ability for director Bong Joon-ho to bring out the intended acting skills in the actors became even more impressive. This time, I was able to think about the cinematic elements in Parasite and wanted to know what attracted and impressed the audience and judges so much.
  Rather than directly expressing the director’s intentions, the film employs metaphors and depictions so that the audience may infer the story and speculate on its meaning, opening the door to various connotations and interpretations. Therefore, I think the metaphors and depictions shown in this movie have attracted the audience’s interest. This was similar to the cinematic elements that director Bong Joon-ho has shown in many movies in the past, including Memories of Murder and Snowpiercer. Thus, I thought about the cinematic elements contained in the film. First, I thought about the overall flow of the story. The movie features the family of Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) who lives in abject poverty and Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) who lives in extraordinary wealth. Ki-woo and his family were barely making ends meet by scrounging wherever they could. The film begins as Ki-woo, the son from the poor family, has a chance to tutor the daughter of a wealthy family. He sees this as a golden opportunity for his own family. He eliminates the other employees, the tutor, the housekeeper and the chauffer, by getting them fired. He replaces them, one by one, with his own family members. Then slowly but surely, the poor family started living off the rich family, like parasites. Director Bong Joon-ho showed the audience the gap between the rich and the poor by portraying juxtaposing scenes. I thought that somehow the acting of the main characters, who struggled to make ends meet, succeeded in winning the sympathy of the audience.
  There are two impressive and important metaphors, the ‘stone’ and ‘no plan at all’ that we should focus on. The stone, which was supposed to bring wealth and fortune to the family, was given to Ki-woo by his friend Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon). Ki-woo. They valued the gift  as if it was a great and precious object and treated it accordingly. Also, the stone keeps appearing throughout the movie until the end. Through the stone, Bong reveals Ki-woo, who is poor but vain, as he shows himself to be a high-value man protecting the stone to the end. The chief of staff did nothing to alleviate their poverty but instead made them indulge in vanity thinking that they were living a better life. Also, by keeping the stone, even if they were broken, Ki-woo shows how much he undervalues himself. Meanwhile, Ki-woo’s father said to Ki-woo, “The plan is that there is no plan. Nothing happens as planned.” This means that Ki-woo’s family goes from day to day without a goal. They did whatever it took to survive, and they tried to attract my family by creating opportunities while tutoring rich homes. This opportunistic aspect, coupled with the environment of poverty, is thought to have helped the audience become more deeply immersed.
  A third interesting metaphor emerges when, Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) notes that Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), who became his chauffeur, is almost ‘crossing the line’. This suggests that the poor share the same interests and that the rich, like themselves, should live by the rules. Through the direct expression of ‘line,’ Bong divided the rich and the poor so that the audience could be more immersed in the theme of the movie. Also, Dong-ik hated Ki-woo’s family because they smelled strange. This smell, like a line, is an expression of the difference between wealth and poverty. In the latter part of the movie, Dong-ik blocks his nose. Ki-taek saw that and killed him. I think Bong’s extreme choice of murder was the most impressive aspect of the movie.
  You may think that the subject of Parasite is simply about the gap between rich and poor. However, I believe the combination of the cinematic elements and actors’ acting that has been melted into it has resulted in a great movie. I am proud to recognize the excellence and potential of Korean films. Also, it was surprising that those points worked in foreign countries. Starting with director Bong Joon-ho’s film, I hope that various Korean films will be available at theaters around the globe and that they will shine at the Academy Awards in the future.