"Parasite," directed by Bong, Joon-ho, is a cinematic masterpiece that captivates audiences with its suspenseful storytelling and brilliant cinematography. Released in 2019, the film garnered widespread acclaim and made history by winning the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first South Korean film to receive this honor. Bong, Joon-ho, known for his unique storytelling and genre-blending style. The movie, Parasite, is a film that implies long-lasting conflicts, which is the gap between the poor and the rich, in Korean society by comparing financially polarized two families. To depict the different lifestyles of the two families more clearly, the director used diverse methods such as the usage of line; tilt down; color; black and white; stairs; and nature. 

To describe the different lifestyles of the two families, it is required to summarize the entire story and give an explanation about each character. Parasite shows how the poor Kims family enter the lives of the wealthy family, Parks. Ki taek Kim’s Son Ki-woo starts tutoring the daughters of the Parks, and the rest of the Kims take over the various jobs one by one. Tricks and manipulations get worse as the Kims take advantage of the trust of the Parks.

 

In the film, the director used the line in the house to show different sizes of personal boundaries between Donk-ik and Ki-taek’s family. In the movie, there are many lines in various structures which are located between Dongik’s family and Kitaek’s family. In other words, the line shows the margin of the personal boundaries of each family and character. Interestingly, the characters in the rich family emphasize on not crossing the line while the characters of the poor family keep trying to cross the line even though they pretend to not cross the line in front of the rich family. In the scene where Dong-ik explains about his previous house helpers’ good qualities, which is not crossing the line and  Donik thinks this is a great quality as a house helper, to Ki-taek in his car, he says “She never crosses the line. I can't stand people who cross the line.” The quote implies that Dongik does not allow people to enter his personal space. Seeing this movie, it is allowed to recognize that only the characters of the rich family emphasize the importance of not crossing the personal boundaries. This suggests that the Donik’s family regards the Kitaek’s family as inferior so that Donik’s family does not want Kitaek’s family pretend to belong in Donik’s family. Moreover, in terms of job, Donik’s family regards Kitaek’s family as their servants not their family members even though they spend time together in their house. In other words, Donik’s family don’t want to feel the sense of kinship with Kitaek’s family. Therefore, Donik’s family does not allow Kitaek’s family to cross their personal boundaries. For example, to show how important it is not to cross the line in Dong-ik’s house, the director set a camera angle to show a vertical line between Dong-ik and Ki-taek’s family. In other words, every time when the characters of Donik’s family and the characters of Kitaek’s family are together, there are some structures between them which implies a vertical line to the audience. While Ki-taek’s family works in Dong-ik’s house, they never cross the line between them, which is what the proper worker for Dong-ik’s family should follow. 

At the beginning and the end of the film, the director used tilt-down, one of the camera movements, to show the unchanging economic status of Ki-woo, the son of Ki-taek. Tilt-down refers to lowering the camera from top to bottom along a vertical axis

Director Bong used this method to generate an atmosphere of a character’s low economic status, and demolished dreams. In the case of Parasite, the film shows the view outside the window in the semi basement house, so the audience can see the legs of people walking and the wheels of a passing car. Through the tilt-down method, the director shows the appearance of Ki-woo living under the place where general people walk by. By showing Kiwoo’s position, the audience can recognize the low economic ability of Ki-woo's family living under ordinary people because ordinary people live above the ground where Kiwoo’s family cannot afford to pay for the rent. At the end of the film, Ki-woo is shown to reunite with his father after saving enough money to buy the Dong-ik house, but with a brief black screen, the tilt down method is used again to show the reality of Ki-woo’s not improved economic status. The camera shows the view of the outside from Ki-woo’s house for a few seconds, and then it steadily exposes Ki-woo, sitting on the ground just the same as when the film begins. This suggests that his economic status has not improved even after a long time.

    Junho Bong conveys a gloomy mood and delivers confusion to the audience. On a rainy, dark night, Ki-taek's family faces floods by pouring rain at a semi-basement house. In this scene, the director depicted the situation with black and gray colors without any other colors to emphasize the tragic atmosphere because somber colors or dark colors literally show a dismal atmosphere. Moreover, ironically, the director uses bright and multifarious colors to show the brutality of a tragic moment on a happy bright day in a greeny garden. In the scene of Park Da-song's birthday, the man who has hidden in the basement of Dongik’s house suddenly comes out from the basement and harms Ki-taek’s family as revenge for his wife. Being at the scene of murder, a child faints and people die on a very peaceful, bright day. This disharmony takes the brutality of the tragedy to its extreme. The reason why disharmony leads to brutality is that while the audience expects a positive situation coming through bright colored scenes, in fact the director intentionally uses the bright color to emphasize cruelty which is a scene of people dying on a bright day. In short, feeling despair when a person feels happy is more dramatic than feeling despair when a person feels nothing.

    The gap between the rich and the poor is more clearly expressed by the black-and-white because limited variables show disparity more easily. In other words, since black and white are the limited color usage, only brightness of black color is emphasized like either stronger black or lighter black. Therefore, these stronger black and lighter black epitomizes the economic gap between Donik’s family and Kitaek’s family. In black-and-white movies, only black, white, and gray colors exist, making it difficult to show the difference because of the uniformed tone. However, the atmosphere of two families in different economic and social positions is more clearly visible due to the distinct difference in brightness. If various colors were used to depict a scene, the audience cannot understand the message of the director since they might focus on the colorful scene. However, if there is only black and white, the audience can focus on the message itself without being distracted by the colorful background  because the number of colors to consider increases. However, in the case of black-and-white movies, differences are shown through contrast, that is, color brightness. The only difference in black and white movies is brightness, so it is easy for the audience to recognize it. Therefore, the absence of color will be able to confirm the condition of Ki-taek and Dong-ik through brightness.

In Parasite, stairs represent a stark difference in social class. In the scene, In order for Kitaek’s family to go to a Donik’s house, they must go up the stairs. There are scenes when Kitaek’s family climbs stairs and opens three consecutive doors to reach Donik’s house, and when Kitaek’s family go back to their house, they just easily descend the stairs. This suggests the difference in speed. To be rich, it takes a long time while it takes a small amount of time to be poor. Moreover, even though a person hardly becomes rich, the person is easily unthroned from their high economic status. Moreover, as Dong-ik's family went camping and returned home due to heavy rain, Ki-taek's family, who was secretly resting at Dong-ik's house, hides in a hectic manner and runs away when Dong-ik falls asleep. In this process, Ki-taek's family goes down countless stairs. Since the stairs show the difference in class, it shows how different Park, Dong-ik's economic situation and Kim, Ki-taek's economic ability are through the countless number of stairs.

For cities with lots of architecture, such as Seoul, people sometimes go to parks and mountains that are harmonized with nature to relax in nature or appreciate its beauty. In the case of the area where Ki-taek’s house is located, there are only houses, power lines, and narrow alleys that are not properly illuminated by sunlight. Therefore, there is no place to call a haven around Ki-taek. However, the audience can see grasses and sunlight shining through the wide alleys while Ki-woo is walking to visit Dong-ik's house. There is also a noticeable difference in the visible landscape that characters can see from inside of their house. In the case of Ki-taek's family, they see the legs of people passing by, wheels of cars, and street urinators through the small windows located above the walls. However, the sunlight always shines on Dong-ik's house, and the windows of the living room provide a view of the grass in the large yard. Unlike Ki-taek, Dong-ik can see the scenery that harmonizes with nature in his home without going outside. Through this difference, Bong Joon-ho, the director, shows that the rich even take up more natural environments, such as sunlight and grass, than the poor.

Parasite, the title of the movie, can mean that Ki-taek's family, which has a bad economic situation, lives depending on the house of a wealthy family through fake employment, but it can be said that it means insects that live in other living things in order to get nutrients necessary for growth and life, that is, a rich family that cannot drive, educate, housekeeping, and cook directly and has to hire others to rely on them.