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FILM Rory Kiberd Eoghan Lyng Michael McDermott Sh
ane O’Reilly illustration: Stasele Jakunskaite Parasite Director: Bong Joon-ho Talent: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam Released: 7 February “She’s nice because she’s rich. Hell, if I had all this money. I’d be nice, too!” – Mother Chung-sook observes the power of wealth in Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed class drama We often go to the cinema with certain expectations, only to be disappointed to have them defied. Other times, films live up to our expectations, but, as a result, are soon forgotten. Then there are those rare films that not only upend our expectations, but exceed them, delighting us with their unpredictability. Parasite is one such movie. The hype is very much to be believed. We follow the schemes of a poor family living in a down-at-heel basement apartment in Korea. One by one, they inveigle their way into the household of a supremely wealthy upper-class family. First, the son procures a job teaching the daughter English by pretending he’s a college graduate. Second, upon his recommendation, the family hires his sister, who pretends to be an art teacher who can instruct the youngest, a supposedly “gifted” boy. And last, the mother and father, through even more dubious means, nab jobs as housemaid and limo driver respectively. With the wealthy and the impoverished rubbing off each other in close quarters, Parasite looks poised to be a dark comedy of societal manners. And for a while it is, and, if it remained so, it would probably still have been a great. But then… well, something big happens, which would be criminal to spoil. Suffice to say, Parasite pivots drastically into terrain that no one could ever predict. This new barmy conceit that starts to unravel certainly strains credulity. But rather than this being a problem, Parasite finds a new potency in its unreality, with the film becoming more of a political parable, or a horrifying allegory for class inequality. And even though it’s far-fetched, it’s not completely impossible, unlike last year’s grossly overrated Us, which tried to be all things Dark Waters Director: Todd Haynes Talent: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins Released: 28 February “In a small town, in a close community, a secret is hiding beneath the surface.” No, Dark Waters isn’t the latest Stephen King adaptation for the big screen but rather Todd Haynes tackling the evil of big business. In 1999, Robert Bilott (Ruffalo), a partner in a law firm and a specialist in helping corporations negotiate environmental regulations switched sides and sued the chemical leviathan that is DuPont in a class-action suit on behalf of 70,000 residents of West Virginia and Ohio. DuPont were knowingly dumping several thousand tons of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a toxic, nonbiodegradable chemical used in making Teflon – thereby poisoning hundreds of acres of land, killing and deforming animals, contaminating the water supply, and doing long-term, irreversible damage to the health of the community. Turns out West Virginia isn’t almost heaven after all and as was the case with our former ‘Teflon’ Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, it all comes unstuck in the end. An eighteen-year legal struggled ensued until Bilott won a $671m settlement for 3500 people who filed claims. Bilott = good guy. DuPont = bad guys. From the makers of Spotlight… Dark Waters joins a few others recent release tales of human endurance such as Just Mercy in exploring the injustices of our times. It’s a triedand-tested formula for quality film-making, a good old fashioned, human interest drama which has been competed to Erin Brockovich. And Haynes is a solid and safe pair of hands with this material. It’s one of his more conventional efforts which he considers “a primer on how to live with as much knowledge and awareness as possible.” Anne Hathaway plays his pregnant wife Sarah, frustrated by the all-consuming nature of his quest. Though it fails to delve much deeper into this; Dark Waters is a bigger picture story, not the hippest, talking point, release of the moment. And, perhaps, therein lies our downfall. MMD Jihad Jane Director: Ciarán Cassidy Released: 14 February Swedish artist Lars Vilks was invited to contribute a Roundabout Dog in an installation. Restoring the head of a prophet on its body, Vilks was personally informed a fatwa was instructed his way. In 2009, a group congregated together in Waterford to act out the plan. Two of its members were American women, upsetting their home country’s media that the United States had personally bred white, blond haired, terrorists. Coleen LaRose, whose chosen nom de plume ‘Jihad Jane’ was met with fervent interest and media detail, recalls with disappointment the disorganisation she met on what she thought was her personal crusade. Turning to an Irish library, LaRose contacted the FBI to inform them of her group’s intentions. To her surprise, she was subsequently charged for her involvement. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, Islam convert and Colorado native, also expressed a desire to act as a martyr. Their encounters, communications and passages started on online forums, yet when they met in Ireland, both women had no doubt of their commitment to act out their terrible action. It’s a fascinating look at an extraordinary event; a warning too! Espousing the dangers of terrorism, the documentary pointedly marks the danger of the internet. Both women admit to lonely, often abusive, family lifestyles, earmarking a fascination for the sensational lifestyle life beyond a keyboard provides. In time honoured tradition, it met neither of their expectations. Paulin-Ramirez married Algerian fighter Ali Charaf Damache out of a desire to bear more children while LaRose, who knew Charaf Damache as online assemblyman ‘Black Flag’, remembers her disappointment when she came face to face with the trooper. It’s a compelling, if imperfect, watch. Subtitles aimlessly weave in and out of the screen, a mismanaged decision. Minor issues aside, the film never loses sight of the dangers that exist behind the search engines we use daily. There’s a fable at hand here. EL – a metaphor that was also literal – and ended up being a big, muddled nothing. Joon-ho is such a tactile director that he manages to sell anything, no matter how far-fetched. He can mingle tones effortlessly, farce and tragedy coexisting with ease, often in the same scene. The pacing and the rhythm of scenes is so gratifying, with virtuosically edited montages where no fine-grained detail is an accident. So, what’s Parasite about? The moral bankruptcy that results from not having anything in the bank? The smug complacency of those who can’t remember the last time they had to “ride the subway”? The mask slips on both sides, the disenfranchised bear a hidden vengeance, and the wealthy a sneering contempt for their underlings. What’s great about this film is that it shows how vast income inequality can be a zerosum game when it comes to the development of one’s character. The absurdly wealthy are credulous, oblivious to what’s happening outside their walled trophy-home; whereas the poor blame their own deviousness on their unfavourable circumstances – the mother says “she’d be nice, even nicer” if she had the means to be so. Of course, it’s the poor family who’s more soulful, but Joon-ho is also careful not to make saintly martyrs out of them. It’s very cheering to note that it has been a box office smash in the US, the best ever for a foreign language film. It goes to show that people are becoming less daunted by subtitles. Who knows? Maybe one day, knockout films like this won’t be relegated to the foreign language category in awards ceremonies. Either way, this Palme D’Or winner is the best film in this awards cycle. RK 76