Henkjan de Krijger

@henq · 29 Jan 2020

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Over de maker van 'Parasite'

Fourteen years ago, a behemoth invaded Cannes. A Korean movie called The Host was premiering at the festival sidebar known as the Director’s Fortnight. Predictably, the old Cannes hands were aghast that a film about a man trying to save his daughter from the clutches of a carnivorous sea monster had been invited, yet the line was enormous and snaked out onto the Croisette. I’d been a fan of the director’s previous, non-monster movies and joined it. There was something different about this crowd. Excitable local hausfraus were in line, not just the usual film nerds. And in 10 years of attending the festival as a critic and as a viewer, I’d never witnessed such spontaneous cheering during a film, nor such an unforced ovation. Even the director himself seemed like an entirely new sort of person on the scene—a tall, diffident-looking man who boldly admitted to making horror movies, and who was already becoming known to anglophone fans as simply “Bong.”

Fast-forward 14 years. In 2019, Bong’s new film, a genre-fluid thriller about a poor family that insinuates itself into the domestic life of a wealthy family, premiered at Cannes. I wasn’t at the festival this time, but as soon as the film ended, I got an emoji-laden text from a friend, the actor Tilda Swinton: “Parasite is a masterpiece!” Swinton’s words were borne out quickly. Parasite took home the Palme d’Or and is arguably the most popular winner of the festival’s top prize since 1994’s Pulp Fiction.


Things have changed for Bong Joon Ho. Or perhaps it’s the other way around: Bong Joon Ho changed things.


#Parasite
#Bongjoonho