Thrilling Moments, Social Commentary, and Illustrative Mise-en-Scene of the Film 'Parasite'

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Parasite
In this film, the Director, Bong Joon Ho, skillfully captures the theme of class divisions in Seoul, Korea, in a thrilling and yet comic way. The movie pits two protagonist families from totally different social classes, the Kims and the Parks. The Kim family belongs to the lower class and consists of Ki-taek, Chung-sook, his wife, and their children Ki-woo alias Kevin (son) and daughter Ki-Jung (Jessica). On the other side is the Parks family, who belong to the upper class and comprises Mr. Park (Lee Sun-Kyun), Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-Jeong), their daughter, Da-hye, and son, Da-song. The film is packed with thrilling moments, social commentary, and illustrative Mise-en-Scene that gives it a visual completion. The director populates the screen with doppelgangers with tremendous accuracy in his vertical spaces usage. At the same time, Hong Kyung-pyo, the cinematographer, relays spectacular visual contrasts to portray the existing wealth disparity in a hostile and satirical manner.
The Kim family survives by doing menial jobs and living in a condensed, dingy semi-basement with intermittent social services like a wi-fi network. They struggle to feed themselves and depend on street-cleaning pesticides to fumigate their home. However, the family gets a breakthrough in climbing the social ladder when Kevin is recommended to be an English tutor to Mr. Park's daughter, Da-hye. Without valid certificates, Kevin forges the documents with the help of his sister Jessica. Eventually, he lands the job and connives to recommend his entire family to take up various roles at the Parks home without the Parks family realizing that they belong to one family. Jessica becomes Da-song's art tutor, Mr. Kim becomes Mr. Park's chauffeur, and Chung-sook becomes the family's maid replacing the Parks long-time housekeeper Moon-gwang.
The director's mise-en-scene, the arrangement of all visual elements in the frame, is accurate and substantially fulfills its intended role of addressing the film's theme by giving it a unique visual tone and feel. He begins by laying the context of his protagonists` deplorable living environment to crop the audience into the frame visually. The camera captures a dirty, busy street in the background, a window frame that sets boundary lines in the middle, and hanging socks in the foreground. Such a captivating screening sets a unique visual tone and feel, making the viewer experience poverty first-hand.
The Kims represent the lower class, and Bong does not disappoint in portraying the low living standards in the initial scenes to set the film's class segregation theme. He strategically captures Kevin's and Jessica's frantic search for wi-fi in the toilet area, positioned at the screen's top right corner. The toilet's depiction is used to remind us that the family lives in a dingy basement since the toilet is at an unusual location. The frame expands and incorporates more activities as the camera's movements resonate with the characters` right to left movements until Mr. Kim stops working after the street fumigants start engulfing the room.
The director adopts numerous mise-en-scene usage in the subsequent scenes. For instance, Kevin's first encounter wi...