Joon-Ho Bong (Korea, 1969) directed the
farcical Flandersui Gae/ Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) and
the thriller Sarinui Chueok/ Memories of Murder (2003).
The latter,
starring Kang-ho Song,
is ostensibly about finding a serial killer but mostly focuses on
the
contrast between the rural detective, a comic but very humane character
and the city detective, a cold and calculating machine.
In fact, we never find out who the killer was.
There is a philosophical story behind the comedy and the tragedy: they never
get any clue on the killer's identity, and even years later, when the
detective, returns to the crime of the scene, a girl can't tell him
anything about the mysterious man seen in the same place.
There is no way to find out the truth.
A detective is taken (by tractor) to a rural area where a woman has been
raped, killed and buried into a big pipe. There are only children and
peasants around. The police force seems totally incompetent, including the
detective, who claims to be able to identify a guilty man just by looking
intensely at him. He is no inept that he mistakes a city detective (sent to
help with the case) for a rapist chasing a girl, when in fact the city
detective was simply trying to ask her a question.
His wife tells him that people are gossiping about the
retarded child of a family, who was seen chasing the woman.
The kid confesses and shoeprints prove that he was on the scene of the crime.
It looks like the case is solved. But the city detective easily proves that
the kid can't possibly have strangled the victim, given that his hands
don't open properly.
This is the second case of a rape and murder. The city detective thinks there
is a third one, a girl who has been missing. The city detective even figured
out where her body might be, and in fact a search finds it.
He also noticed that all three girls were attacked on rainy days. And
the technique was the same.
The city detective does not miss opportunities to show contempt for the
amateurish town cops, even when they invite him to a karaoke bar.
Another woman gets raped and killed on a rainy day, and the detectives find
no evidence. The town detective comes up with the idea that the killer must
have no pubic hair, because none has been found at the scenes of the murders.
By studying the records of a radio station, a female police
officer finds out that on the days of the murders someone has requested
the same song.
The town detective visits a sauna to check on men without pubic hair.
His wife even suggests that he sees a clarvoyant.
Independently, the two rival detectives converge onto the same suspect and
arrest him while he is masturbating in the woods in front of women's lingerie.
And this time the city detective is amazed that the town detective's instinct
worked.
The city detective investigates a gossip at the high school about a maniac
squatting in the outhouse, and then the story of a woman who was seen
crying. This one, a scared woman who lives in an insolated house,
turns out to be a woman who escaped the killer.
She describes the killer and the city detective realizes that he can't be
the pervert who is being tortured by the town detective.
The two detectives get into a fist fight because the town detective can't
stand the haughty attitude of the city detective, who keeps proving him
an idiot. Their fight is interrupted by the police cop: the radio station
is playing the song, and it is raining outside. They issue the alarm but
it is too late: a woman has been killed.
This time the radio station has saved the postcard of the person who requested
the song, and that person conveniently wrote his (the sender's) address and
name.
Hyun-Kyu is a worker who was hired at the local factory just before the first
murder occurred. They arrest him but can't properly interrogate him because
one of the cops beat him up.
Chatting with the town detective, the city detective realizes that the
retarded boy's confession was real in the sense that the kid really told
all the details about the murder of the girl. This means that the kid must
have witnessed the crime. The detectives try to find the retarded kid
but the same violent cop causes a scuffle in his parents' restaurant.
The kid comes to the rescue of his folks and sticks a rusty nail into the violent cop's leg.
The kid this time admits that he saw the killer. The detectives want him
to identify Hyun-Kyu in aphotograph but the kid gets scared, runs away
and is run over by a train. There goes their only witness.
Hyun-Kyu is released from jail pending a DNA test that is being performed in
the USA, the violent cop has his leg amputated because the rusty nail caused
an infection.
The city detective is keeping an eye on Hyun-Kyu but one evening his car
breaks down. That very night someone kidnaps a schoolgirl in the woods nearby,
and we see her terrified face as the killer prepares to rape her, while
the city detective looks in vain for his suspect. That night it is not
raining, but it rains when they find the body: the killer has inserted a
pen and a spoon in her vagina. This time the city detective snaps and he
personally tortures Hyun-Kyu, but the town detective stops him:
the DNA tests are in and they exonerate Hyun-Kyu. The city detective still
believes in Hyun-Kyu's guilt and tries to kill him, but the town detective
stops him and lets the suspect walk away (into a railway tunnel).
Years later, the former town detective is married with two children and works
as a salesman (his wife is the female cop). He stops by the first crime scene
and takes a walk. A passing girl is puzzled because another man was looking
at the same place not long before. He would like to find out who this man
was (the city detective or the killer?) but the girl can't provide any
useful information... again no evidence.
The blockbuster Gwoemul/ The Host (2006),
starring Kang-ho Song,
stands as a compendium of genres
that extends beyond monster movies (Ishiro Honda's Gojira/ Godzilla, Steven Spielberg's Jaws, Ridley Scott's Alien, John Carpenter's The Thing) and beyond the science-fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s centered on nuclear mutatations (Gordon Douglas' Them, Jack Arnold's Tarantula, Bert Gordon's Beginning of the End, etc)
to Frank Capra's family comedy and political satire (You Can't Take It with You),
to Steven Spielberg's adventure films (Jurassic Park) and to
mangas (the little resolute heroine drenched in grime).
Mainly, Bong's gang of amateur dragon slayers constitutes an ode to the family,
no matter how dysfunctional it has become in the post-war era.
Abandoned by authorities who are incompetent, mischievious and corrupt,
they are left to fend for themselves.
They are not vengeful, they just want their ordinary boring life back.
To succeed, they have to fight (directly or indirectly) a monster, the police,
a mad scientist, their own government, and the world's superpower (whose
top-secret schemes are never fully revealed but always in the background).
In fact, one wonders who is the real monster: the creature that captures the
little girl or the society that has created it and now indirectly protects it.
It might or might not be a coincidence that the old man is hard-working,
wise and courageous, and the women (both the aunt and the little protagonist)
are smart and resolute, whereas the young men are dumb, useless and unemployed.
It does sound like an attack against the males of the Bong's generation.
The scoundrels are just about everybody else who does not constitute a family:
the very government that is supposed to provide assistance and instead only
provides inhuman regulations, the media (that are ridiculed no less than the
authorities), the crowd (in which family values dissipate and wither), and
the distant world of international politics (at the end the official report
is deemed so irrelevant that we never get to hear it).
The film also has nationalistic overtones, touching repeatedly on widespread
"anti-American" sentiment in Asia: the incident that sets the film in motion
did indeed occur in 2000 when a US team dumped 120 liters of formaldehyde
into a morgue's sink, which eventually led to contamination of a river;
the mad scientist who proceeds with lobotomy even knowing that the virus does
not exist represents the nonsense of US foreign policy, driven by obscure
motives and indifferent to "collateral damage";
we don't hear the final conclusion of the report prepared by the senate of the
USA, and that too is a not so veiled comment (it cannot be trusted anyway, so
it is not worth our time to even listen to it).
At the same time an off-duty soldier is the first hero of the film (the first
one who doesn't just scream and flee) and the secret chemical that demonstrators
oppose does actually work against the monster without apparently hurting the
family.
In a morgue a Western scientist orders his younger Korean assistant to dump
toxic chemicals in the sink, indifferent to the fact that the chemicals will
end up in the river.
One day six years later two fishermen spot a fish with multiple tails.
A scientist commits suicide from a bridge, calling morons those who try to
save him.
Hee-Bong is an old man who proudly runs a food stand by the river, selling
snacks to the people who enjoy a picnic in the nearby park.
His son Gang-du is retarded and doesn't quite help. Gang-du comes alive only
when his little daughter Hyun-seo comes back from school. He plays games
and watches television with her.
He has been saving coins like a child to buy her a new mobile phone because
she is ashamed that she has such an ugly and old one.
When they turn on the tv set, they first see the news of the man's suicide,
but they are eager to watch an archery competition
in which Gang-du's sister Nam-joo is competing. However,
granpa sends Gang-du to deliver food urgently to some customers who complained,
and then granpa joins the girl in front of the tv set.
Gang-du and others see a creature diving into the river.
Initially, they are captivated but then the
monster jumps on land and wreaks havoc among the bystanders.
Only a foreign off-duty soldier tries to confront the monster,
and Gang-du is the only one to join him.
Meanwhile, Nam-joo loses the semifinal and Hyun-seo walks
out of the house just when the monster is running past it.
She is grabbed by the monster and taken into the river while her father
watches powerless. The authorities don't leave him time to mourn his
daughter: he is told to immediately evacuate the area. They are transported
to a compound where a memorial for all the dead has been set up.
Dozens of relatives are crying in front of pictures of their beloved ones.
That includes Gang-du, his sister the archer Nam-joo (who lays her bronze
medal in front of her niece's picture), their chronically drunk brother
Nam-il (unemployed like the others but well-educated, except that he spent
his youth in student protests), and their father Hee-Bong.
The whole family rolls on the floor, heavily photographer by paparazzis.
Later the old man explains that Gang-du is retarded because
Hyun-seo's mother ran away after giving birth, an unwanted pregnancy.
Scientists in the USA have discovered that the creature is the product of
a virus and the local government has decided to quarantine all the people who
came in close contact with the beast. Gang-du admits having monster's blood
all over his face when the soldier attacked it, and men wrapped in yellow
protective suits immediately grabbed him and take him to a special hospital.
The entire family follows him.
Television shows that the soldier has developed a horrible infection that
causes a rash and high fever. It could be highly contagious.
Gang-du is scheduled to be visited the following day but overnight he receives
a call from... Hyun-seo! She is alive, kept in the dragon's lair that she
describes as a giant sewer. That is the place where the monster drops the ones
it captures.
The authorities refuse to help, not believing that a dead girl can make phone
calls. In fact, they diagnose schizophrenia on Gang-du.
The family manages to escape in a slapstick sort of style from the hospital.
Granpa buys a fumigation truck and a gun from some thugs with all of his
savings. Now the only money they have is the coins that Gang-du saved for his
daughter's new cell phone. And that's precisely the money they need later to
bribe the official at a police checkpoint.
The family reaches the sewers and start roaming around searching for the girl.
The family takes shelter at their snack stand.
When the monster attacks their stand, they are prepared: they shoot and
the monster runs away and they chase it along the river.
Alas, they run out of bullets. The family runs back to the truck while
the old man faces the monster alone and is quickly killed.
To make things worse, Gang-du is captured by the police.
They are now wanted all over town.
Television shows that the scientist of the USA who has provided the virus theory
has died mysteriously.
Nam-il and Nam-joo split. Nam-il calls an old college buddy, who was part of
the same political protests in their college days and is now a manager in
a telecom company. The friend can
help locate from where the girl made the cell phone call.
The computer gets Nam-il the information (that he texts to his sister)
but his friend has betrayed him: the office is surrounded by cops
(the friend, the old socialist protester, has done it to collect the reward
money). However, Nam-il is used to guerrilla methods and manages to escape.
Nam-joo is busy tracking down the monster but her bow does little to help her.
She texts the location to Gang-du, who is being sedated at the hospital.
A sadistic US doctor interviews him.
Gang-du tells them that he knows where his daughter is, but in vain: they
are only interested in operating him.
The doctor officially diagnoses that the deadly virus has infected Gang-du's
brain, but then Gang-du overhears him saying that
no virus has been found on any of the victims of the beast. It is a
top secret thought.
The sadistic doctor
still proceeds with the brain lobotomy (for a virus that doesn't exist)
and with no anesthesia (and keeping a father from rushing to his daughter's help).
Meanwhile, Hyun-seo has met a boy in the monster's lair, Se-joo.
They are both filthy and hungry, but alive.
They use clothes from dead people to make a very long rope with which they
hope to climb out of their trap. But just then the monster comes back and
vomits skeletons, lots of them.
She tries bravely to escape but is swallowed by the monster.
Her uncle finds a bum under a bridge who helps him prepare molotov bottles,
a skill that Nam-il learned at the time of the student protests.
Then they take a taxi to the sewer's location.
Gang-du gets to the right place in the sewers but finds nobody, just the
skeletons.
His sister the archer is also there, and they finally meet again.
They realize that the monster is holding Hyun-seo in its mouth.
Nam-il and the bum arrive in the taxi armed with molotov bombs.
Meanwhile, protesters are staging a demonstration against the USA (that wants
to test a new poison gas on the monster) and against their government (to free
Gang-du, now a celebrity). As the police prepares to charge the demonstrators
and a loudspeaker repeats silly announcements, the
monster attacks from behind. The police release the new poison gas which in
fact stops the monster.
Gang-du hits a police officer before he can shoot (lest the shot kills
Hyun-seo), opens the mouth of the
monster, and pulls his daughter out. She is still hugging the little boy,
and they are both breathing.
Uncle and aunt join Gang-du in finishing the monster: Nam-il's molotovs,
a flaming arrow shot by the archer, and Gang-du's improvised spear
deal the fatal blows.
Gang-du goes back to his father's snack stand and adopts the little boy.
They turn on the television set but get bored because the station
is broadcasting live from the USA the findings of an investigations into
the case. They turn it off and we will never know what those findings are.
Madeo/ Mother (2009) is an odd beast, half detective film with comic
overtones that at times sounds like a
sendup of the sleuth genre and half a Tarantino-era version of
Hitchcock's and DePalma's most morbid psychological thrillers.
The film contains
a terrifying allegory on justice: first a mentally handicapped boy is
accused of a crime because it's the easiest way to close the case, and then
he is released simply because an even more deranged boy provides an even
better way to close the case.
An old woman, who runs a tiny apothecary in a small provincial town,
is keeping an eye on her son, Do-jun, who is playing with a dog
in the street. Suddenly, a car drives by at high speed and almost kills
the boy. His best friend Jin-tae drags Do-jun into a taxi and they chase the
hit-and-run bastards. The only injury, actually, has occurred to the mother,
who was chopping herbs, and who, startled, chopped a bit of flesh off her finger.
Do-jun is mentally retarded and his friend makes fun of his idiocy.
They catch up with them at the golf course. First
Jin-tae smashes the car's rear mirror and then the two kids attack the group of
golfers. It turns out that the golfers are important "professors" who call
the police. The police officer tries to mediate for a settlement. When one of
the professors calls Do-jun "retard", the boy snaps and almost starts a
fight in front in the police station. Finally, his mother arrives to pick him
up and take him home. Unfortunately, someone has to pay for the broken mirror,
and Jin-tae makes everybody believe (even Do-jun himself) that it was
Do-jun's doing. Now his mother needs to find the money to pay for the mirror.
Do-jun spends the evening in a night-club and gets drunk.
He's in love with the pretty high-school student named Ah-Jung.
When but the club's owner kicks him
out unceremoniously, Do-jun follows Ah-jung in the narrow
alleys of the town but then he loses her.
The following day Ah-jung is found murdered on the rooftop.
The police are puzzled: it's the first murder in a long time.
Two detectives go to talk with Do-jun and then push him in the car. They have
to speed up because his mom starts screaming and running after them, and they
end up crashing against another car. Anyway, they make it to the police
station where Du-jun is interrogated and signs a confession.
A golf ball was found next to the dead girl, and Du-jun is known to collect
golf balls.
However, later he tells his mother that he didn't do it.
His mother begs in vain the detective, her old high-school friend Je-mun:
the case is closed.
Do-jun is an easy scapegoat for the police.
A huge crowd assembles to watch when the police make Do-jun
reenact the murder. And Do-jun enjoys all the attention.
At the funeral of the girl the mother screams that Do-jun didn't do it and
is almost lynched by the friends and relatives, rescued by the girl's
mad granma.
His mom hires a famous lawyer and begs Do-jun to remember: Do-jun makes an effort and
at least he now remembers that
it was Jin-tae who broke the mirror. Do-jun's mom begins to suspect Jin-tae.
She breaks into his house and finds traces of blood on a golf club. She hides
in a closet when Jin-tae arrives with girl,
watches them make love, and sneaks out when they fall asleep.
She then runs to the police station, hoping to have solved the case, but it
turns out the "blood" is just lipstick.
She meets the famous attorney in a karaoke club, drunk and
surrounded by gorgeous prostitutes: he tells her that the best that Do-jun
can hope for is four years in a mental hospital.
Jin-tae asks her for compensation but also offers some help. He does a better
analysis than the police: the motive of Ah-jung's murder is mysterious because
the killer hoisted her dead body up to the roof, not buried it, and, her house
being on top of the hill, it meant that the whole town could see it.
The killer wanted the whole town to see it.
Meanwhile, Do-jun suddenly remember something that happened when he was five:
his mother tried to kill him. Back then she got so desperate that she actually
wanted to kill both herself and him. But he only knows that she wanted to kill
him and doesn't want to see her anymore. He is all that she has, all that she
lives for. She now regrets that she didn't use a stronger poison, which would
have spared them all this trouble.
Nonetheless, she keeps investigating. She senses that the dead girl's cell phone
might hold a clue and gets in touch with Ah-jung's best friend.
She sees two kids beating her up in a narrow alley to find out where the cell phone is and saves her by making noise.
She pays Jin-tae to help her interrogate the two kids. They find them in an
amusement park, high on drugs.
They tell Jin-tae
that Ah-jung was nicknamed "Rice Cake Fuck" because she would have sex in exchange
not for money but for rice.
Jin-tae locks them in cabins of the ferris wheel and then proceeds to make them
talk. He's a better cop than the real cops. They reveal that Ah-jung took
pictures of all the guys she slept with, dozens of them.
They laugh that the only one who never slept with her, Do-jun, got blamed for
the murder.
She rushes to granma's place, who still does not believe that the girl is dead,
and convinces her to give her Ah-jung's phone.
At the same time in the middle of the night Do-jun screams that he remembers:
he remembers seeing an old man while he was following Ah-jung in the alley.
His mom makes the connection: there is only one picture of an old man in
the cell phone.
She tracks him down
(she once bought an umbrella from him)
in his cramped shanty and he tells her his version of the facts.
He saw Ah-jung walk by and then Do-jun following her. Ah-jung called him "retard" and Do-jun
threw a big stone at her. Realizing he had killed her, Do-jun had dragged her
body up the stairs to the roof. The old man is a dangerous witness, in fact
the only witness. Do-jun's mom is suddenly aware that nothing will save her
son if this old tramp talks to the police. She grabs a piece of wood and
his him furiously on the head until he dies.
Then she sets fire to the shanty.
She wanders in the fields of wheat. When she finally returns home, resuming
her job chopping herbs like at the beginning, the detective is waiting for her
with good news: they caught a mentally handicapped boy (more handicapped
than Do-jun) who escaped from a
mental asylum and found
Ah-jung's blood on his clothes. The boy's defense is that Ah-jung had
nosebleed while they were having sex. The police do not believe him.
Do-jun's mom knows that this can be true
because during her investigation she found out that Ah-jung had frequent
nosebleeds, and she also knows that Ah-jung slept with just about everybody.
What happened is that the police found a better scapegoat than Do-jun, and
Do-jun will go free for the same reason that he had been arrested in the
first place: an easy way to close a case. His mother knows this and cries
when she meets the boy.
Do-jun is released. Back at home he tells his mom his "theory" of why the
killer hoisted Ah-jung's body to the roof, a theory that noone else could have
come up with, except a retarded boy: she was hurt and needed to be taken to the hospital, so the
killer placed her body where people could see her quickly.
Do-jun, in turn, finds something that belongs to her mother (her acupunture
tools) in the ruins of the shanty that she burned down: so he must guess that she
was the one who set the place on fire. She leaves on a tour bus for a vacation.
The sci-fi movie Seolgungnyeolcha/ Snowpiercer (2013), an adaptation
of the graphic novel "Le Transperceneige" (1982),
starring Kang-ho Song,
was
the most expensive Korean production yet.
Okja (2017) is a mixture of a sentimental fairy tale, a
satirical and even farcical look at the world of big business,
and a harrowing parable about organized mass murder
(there is an obvious parallel between the slaughterhouse and
the Nazi extermination camps as well as between the CEO and Hitler).
The film opens in 2007 in New York at the inauguration party thrown by
Lucy, the new CEO of the Mirando Corporation. The inauguration takes place
in a factory building that, she admits, in the old days was used under the leadership of her granpa for brutal work that exploited workers.
She ecstatically reclaims the space for an environmentalist mission.
She announces that they have discovered a super-pig in a Chilean farm and bred it in the USA and distributed it to farmers around the world asking them to improve it. In ten years they will select the best one.
The corporation scientist in charge of the project is a zoologist, Johnny, who
is world famous for his TV program.
Ten years later a teenager named Mija in South Korea has bred a giant pig which she treats like a pet despite its colossal size.
She and the pig, named Okja, fall asleep in the forest.
They live on a remote mountain top with her grandfather.
While they are walking home, she slips and falls down a cliff, but the pig Okja
is intelligent enough to save her life even if it risks its own.
After ten years, Mija believes that granpa has finished paying for Okja and that the pig now fully belongs to them.
One day they are visited by a South Korean TV crew and
Mirando's zoologist Johnny, whom Mija recognizes as a TV star.
The TV crew and Johnny arrive breathless after a long steep climb.
Johnny is amazed by the view of the giant pig. He declares Okja the
winner of the ten-year competition that will be exhibited at a festival in New York.
Just then granpa tells Mija that her father and mother appeared in his dream and wants
her to visit them. So he takes Mija away from the TV crew and takes her
to the place where they are buried.
He digs up a little gold pig that he bought for her with the money that
was meant to buy Okja. Mija reacts angrily that granpa used the money to buy gold instead of the pig.
She runs back to the farm but it's too late: the crew took Okja away.
She runs down the mountain to the highway but can't catch up with the car.
She walks back home in the middle of the night, angry and crying,
and tells granpa that she intends to go rescue Okja in the big city.
She smashes a pot that contains their savings, takes the money and runs out.
Granpa tries in vain to explain to her that Okja's fate is to be eaten.
He cannot stop her. She gets to the city and heads straight for the offices
of the Mirando corporation. It's past work hours and there is nobody in the
offices. The receptionist inside refuses to open the door
so Mija breaks in. Chased by the receptionist and the security guard, Mija
searches the rooms until she sees Okja being loaded onto a truck.
She runs after the truck through the streets of the city and eventually finds
a way to jump on the truck. Mija hangs on for her life from the back of the truck. The truck is then stopped by masked foreigners on another truck inside a tunnel, causing a traffic jam.
The hijackers are not terrorists: they are members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
They free Okja but Okja starts running wild through the cars blocked behind the trucks.
Okja jumps on the animal and directs it to the subway
The animal's wild ride destroys stores and ends when the pig gets injured
with a shard of glass.
The "terrorists" arrive in time to protect the pig from the police.
They load Okja and Mija in their truck dropping marble balls and shooting shit on the guards that chase them.
Finally the terrorists can properly introduce themselves to Mija. Their leader
is Jay. One of them is Korean and translates from English to Korean and back.
Jay explains to Mija that, contrary to what Mirando's CEO claims, Okja is the result of some cruel biological experiment perpetrated on animals in Mirando's secret laboratory in the USA. They want to expose the scam. They install
a videorecording chip in Okja's ear. They will then let Mirando transport
Okja to the secret lab in the USA so that Okja will record what goes on in the lab.
Jay promises to bring back Okja to her.
Jay asks Mija for her permission to go ahead.
Mija doesn't want Okja to go to America at all, but the interpreter tells Jay
that Mija agreed.
The truck is being chased by dozens of police cars. They stop the truck
on a bridge and jump into the river.
Lucy and the rest of the Mirando management watch TV reportages on the bizarre
case of "pignapping".
Lucy is terrified that some of the images will destroy the reputation of the corporation.
Her right-arm man, Frank, gives her an idea that becomes "her" idea: fly
Mija to New York so she can be with her pig at the festival.
This will restore Mirando's reputation as a humane corporation.
Mija is paraded in front of photographer when she boards the plane in Korea.
Meanwhile, the "terrorists" are following the truck carrying Okja to the lab
and can see everything she sees.
A drunk Johnny welcomes Okja and introduces her to Alfonso, another super-pig.
Okja is forced to mate with Alfonso.
The terrorists watch heartbroken as Okja is basically raped and tortured.
The management is even served a sample of Okja's flesh.
The Korean terrorist now confesses to Jay and the others that he lied
about Mija's consent. Jay the pacifist beats the hell out of him and expels
him from the group.
Mija arrives in New York and is forced to follow the corporation's script if
she wants to see Okja again.
They keep promising to her that they will allow her to take Okja back with her
after the big event.
Jay enters Mija's hotel room disguised as a bell boy.
He has cards written in Korean to explain that he is sorry and they will free Okja during the event.
The Mirando corporation puts up a big event.
Frank informs Lucy at the last minute that her hated twin sister Nancy is around.
Johnny opens the event and introduces Lucy while the terrorists sets their plan in motion.
Lucy invites Mija on stage.
Okja is then carried on stage in a carnival truck.
Mija steps towards her but Okja behaves like she's gone crazy.
The terrorists then attack: they hijack the screen and start showing footage
of how Okja was treated in the lab; they drop propaganda leaflets; and they
hijack the loudspeakers to tell the public that the corporation is evil.
The crowd boos.
Lucy's hated sister Nancy, alerted of the situation, calls a team of mercenary paratroopers to restore order.
The terrorists are beaten and arrested, but the expelled Korean member
frees Mija and Jay, both wounded and bleeding.
Nancy takes control of the corporation and tells Frank to close the secret lab
and to slaughter all the pigs. Frank objects that the public might not eat the meat. Nancy replies: "if it's cheap they'll eat it".
Jay, the Korean and Mija break into the fenced area where the superpigs are
being slaughtered and search for Okja.
Mija wanders around the plant and
sees how machines turn living animals into pieces of meat.
She finds Okja just when a worker is about to shoot Okja in the head.
Mija shouts and shows the man a picture of herself as a child with baby Okja.
This stops him but Nancy arrives, escorted by Frank and others.
They arrest Jay and the Korean. Mija begs Nancy to spare Okja but Nancy
explains that they can only sell dead pigs. Mija then pulls out the golden pig
that her granpa bought for her with all his savings and offers to buy Okja alive.
Nancy tests the gold with her teeth and, realizing that the gold is worth a lot more than a pig, accepts.
Mija and Okja walk away. Mija can still hear the screams of the other pigs being
slaughtered. Two pigs follow her and throw their baby pig under the fence.
Okja hides the piglet in her mouth.
Some time later Mija, Okja and the piglet are back to the peaceful mountain.
We see Okja "talking" to Mija and Mija smiling.
Gisaengchung/ Parasite (2019),
starring Kang-ho Song,
is a horror tragicomedy that hails the
cunning lumperproletariat against the dumb burgeoisie and at the same time
explores the psychology of the "parasites" who want respect too.
There is something of Scola's Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi (1976),
but with a deeper sense of despair, of a fate of endless defeat.
A family of four
(father Ki-taek, mother Chung-sook, teenage daughter Ki-jung and teenage son Ki-woo)
share one room and one bathroom in a decrepit basement and survive with
humble jobs like making pizza boxes. From their basement they can see what
happens in the street, notably a drunk who keeps peeing in front of their
place. One day Ki-woo's best friend Min brings the family a gift: a heavy rock
that should work as a talisman. Min and Kiwoo go out for a drink and Min asks
Kiwoo the favor of tutoring his student Da-hye, a cute girl: he is leaving for studying abroad
and is afraid that the professional tutors will steal the girl from him,
whom he intend to seduce when she enters college. Min will trust Kiwoo with
the girl. Kiwoo has no credentials for such a job, but Min recommends him
and Kijung uses a computer to fake an Oxford certificate. Da-hye's family
is very wealthy: they live in a giant mansion and have a full-time housekeeper
and a chaffeur. Min told Kiwoo that Dahye's mother is gullible and in fact
she accepts Kiwoo as the substitute tutor without checking his references.
Da-hye has a little brother, Dasong, a spoiled brat who likes to paint.
Kiwoo tells his mother that he knows an art tutor who could improve Dasong's
artistic skills. He then introduced his sister Kijung as the art tutor, and
again the gullible mother hires her. Meanwhile, Dahye is falling in love with
Kiwoo. One evening Dahye's father asks his chaffeur to give Kijung
a ride home and the chaffeur tries to seduce her. This gives her an idea:
she plants her underwear in the car, knowing that Dahye's father will think
that the chaffeur is having sex in the back seat. Sure enough the father
fires the chaffeur and then Kijung casually mentions that she knows an
experienced and reliable driver. Then she introduces her father.
Next is the housekeeper, Moon-gwang, who has been with the family since
the beginning because she used to work for the architect who built the home.
Kiwoo learns that she has a peach allergy and Kijung
begins spraying peach perfume everywhere. Their father, who is now the trusted chaffeur, insinuates in Dahye's mother the suspicion that the housekeeper is
coughing because she has turberculosis, and eventually the gullible mother
believes him and fires the housekeeper. Kitaek promptly introduces his wife
as a reliable housekeeper, and so now the whole family is employed by the
wealthy couple, each of them having taken advantage of how gullible the
couple is.
Little Dasong tells his parents that the four all smell the same but the parents
ignore him.
For his birthday the parents decide on a camping trip. They leave and in theory
only
Chung-sook the housekeeper remains at home, but she lets her family in.
They are enjoying the cozy mansion, getting drunk and dreaming that some day
Kiwoo will marry Dahye, when the bell rings.
It's the old housekeeper,
Moon-gwang,
who tells them that she has forgotten something.
Eventually, Chung-sook lets her in and the housekeeper rushes to the basement.
Chung-sook follows her and is shocked to discover a hidden passage behind
an armoir. The passage leads down into a nuclear-proof bunker: a secret
that only Moon-gwang knows. At the very bottom in a small room they find
a starving man:
Moon-gwang's husband, wanted by creditors for debts he can't repay.
Moon-gwang hid him there for years.
Chung-sook's family shows up, curious, and Moon-gwang is quick to understand
the scam and make a video of them that she threatens to send to the owners.
Holding her phone with the finger ready to send the video, she forces
Chung-sook's family to let her and her husband dine upstairs.
Kitaek takes advantage of a moment of distraction and attacks
Moon-gwang to grab the phone. The six fight over the phone until Kijung runs
to the fridge and grabs a bag of peaches that subdues
Moon-gwang. However, just then the phone rings: the owners are coming back
because a storm has flooded the campground.
Chung-sook's family only has eight minutes to hide
Moon-gwang and her husband in the basement, and to clean up.
Then Kiwoo, Kijung and Kitaek have to hide under beds and couches as the
owners enter the house.
Chung-sook kicks Moon-gwang down the stairs who remains unconscious.
Kitaek ties her husband to a chair after noticing that the man is trying
to send Morse signals upstairs by banging his head against a light switch
which makes a light upstairs blink.
Luckily, the owners send the children to bed and then have sex on the couch.
They fall asleep and the trio
of Kiwoo, Kijung and Kitaek can escape. But outside it's an apocalypse of rain.
When they reach their home, they find it flooded. People are rushing out of
their basements like ants.
Kiwoo salvages his talisman, Kijung cries and Kitaek salvages family memories.
Then they join hundreds of other destitute families in a gym, which is the
improvised shelter.
The following day is a sunny day. Dasong's mother decides to throw a birthday
party for the child and invites both tutors, Kiwoo and Kijung, and calls
Kitaek to drive her to do the shopping. Hence the whole poor family is indirectly
invited to the party.
Initially Kiwoo is in Dayhe's room making out with her, but then his sense
a guilt prompts him to check the prisoners in the basement. He finds
Moon-gwang dead and is attacked by her husband who has freed himself.
The husband grabs Kiwoo's talisman and hits him on the head.
Moon-gwang's bloodie husband walks like a zombie upstairs where Kijung is
about to serve the birthday cake to Dasong and stabs Kijung to death.
Dasong faints. Kitaek sees his daughter die in his arms.
Chung-sook attacks and kills the "zombie".
Dasong's father simply asks Kitaek for the car keys, indifferent to the death
of Kijung. Kitaek throws the keys that fall under the dead body of the man.
Dasong's father is disgusted when he grabs the keys.
Kitaek snaps, grabs the knife and stabs Dasong's father to death.
Then he runs away.
Kiwoo survives but has to undergo brain surgery which leaves him mentally
retarded. He keeps laughing even when visiting his sister's ashes.
Kitaek has disappeared. One snowy evening, Kiwoo walks up the hill and watches
the house with binoculars. The house has been sold to new owners.
Kiwoo notices a light that is blinking and writes down the sequence of dots
and lines. Sure enough: his father is hiding in the basement and has learned
how to write in Morse code and every night writes the same letter hoping that
his son, a former boy scout, will see it.
Kiwoo decodes the letter and then writes one himself in which he says that his
plan is to become rich and buy the mansion so they can be reunited.
Mickey 17 (2025)
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