In an awards-season plot twist almost as surprising as the one in the film itself, the South Korean comedy drama Parasite won the Oscar for best picture – to add to the ones it had already taken for best director, best international film, and best screenplay.
It was a sensational and worthy shock, a thrilling moment when the Oscars finally made itself seem relevant and in touch with excellence in contemporary cinema. The award is so satisfying, not just because of the history-making fact that Parasite is the first film not in the English language to become best picture winner. It’s because it’s such a dangerous and ambitious movie.
This satire of capitalism, and the exclusion of the have-nots from the world of the haves, which sees a poor Korean family move into the lives of a rich one by becoming their tutors and their servants, has a surface lustre, a deep grace.
But there is a darkness and a fierceness beneath that glossy beauty, which serves as a profound metaphor for society today but which also works perfectly as a narrative device. Rather like Get Out, it takes a familiar film genre and turns it on its head.