The Dialogue: Bong Joon-Ho

FROM THE MOMENT OF PARASITE’S WORLD PREMIERE IN CANNES, in which a usually stoic European audience hooted and hollered at Bong Joon-ho’s movie’s twists and turns as though it was a midnight screening in Austin, the film’s trajectory has been breakneck. It would go on to win the Palme d’Or, before traveling to festivals the world over and being greeted by audiences with as much fervor as those first screenings. Now, director Bong is nominated for Best Director at the Globes, and Parasite looks set to break out of the international feature race and into Oscar’s main competition.

Is it true that Parasite began as a play?

It is true that I first conceived of this idea as theater, but from the very beginning,it didn’t work out that way. From the first line, I was already thinking about the camera positions. I just realized that I had to dothis as a film, as always.

Where did you get the idea?

Actually, in the case of The Host, one of my previous movies, I had a very clear beginning point. But in this case, it’s much harder to describe how and when it came to be. It was something like a parasite; it was already inside. I just kind of discovered it. Normally, we don’t know when and how a parasite comes into us, so it was similar.

In 2013, during the post-production of Snowpiercer, I have a very clear, early memory of describing this story to someone else. A story about two families—one rich, one poor—where the poor family infiltrates the rich house, at the very beginning.

Frequently in your films, you plan thematic material to explore within allegory, or within a certain genre. What comes first, the theme or the genre?

I never really define the genre that I want the story to be in, or what metaphors or symbols should place within the story. I always just want to depict very interesting and entertaining situations. I move through impulses.

Actually, in the movie, when the young son gets that strange, colored stone, he himself says, “Wow, this is very metaphorical.”[laughs] Usually, it’s the film critics who say, “Wow, that was so metaphorical,” but you have the actor up there, announcing himself. So, it’s very strange. That stone becomes something very important in the film, and I tend to not like symbols. I wanted this film to feel more physical.

It’s true, though, that the film explores deep themes like socioeconomic inequality. Is striking this kind of balance between meaning and entertainment important for you?

For me, instinctively, humor and fun are like the air I breathe. Whenever I work, there always humor, and alongside that comes drama. I always try to maintain those elements, but I always want to hide some very sharp blade inside the social message, or something political. Something very crucial and sharp is inside there, to spark the audience's thought.

How did the Kims and the Parks come together in your mind?

It was like laying bricks, one-by-one. So, the Kim family is unemployed. They're completely capable and smart, but they just don’t have jobs, and that’s the sad part. They’re poor, but at the same time, they’re very intimate. They like to spend time with one another. And then the rich family, the Parks, was mirrored off of the poor family—four family members. But they're rarely together.

Dark, gothic, classical houses often play major roles in horror movies. By contrast, the rich house in Parasite is bright and modern. Were you deliberately subverting what we expect? Yeah, that is what I intended. Of course, the house is the work of a very famous architect, and it features in a very elegant way in the film. You first begin with bright sunlight,and then you delve deeper into the darkness of the house, like you’re going inside a cave. The horror element really comes into the picture in the latter half of the film.

What was it like to share Parasite for the first time at its Cannes premiere?

I was very shocked at Cannes. They applauded in the middle of the movie, two times. It was very strange. Then, after that in places like Sydney and Hanoi and Toronto, the same thing happened, again and again. At the end of that one sequence, when Song [Kang-ho] brings out the bloody tissue paper, people started clapping. It was very strange; it felt like a live concert.

You’d had strange experiences in Cannes before. When you premiered Okja there in 2017, the film got caught up in the controversy surrounding Netflix’sfirst time on the Croisette.

Yeah, exactly. It was very hard to talk about the movie itself. People were always talking about the streaming thing, the tension between the French theater industry and streaming services. It’s very much better to be talking about the film this time around.

In Toronto this year, I met Noah Baumbach.At Cannes in 2017, his movie The Meyerowitz Stories was the other Netflix movie in competition, so we shared the same situation. He’s made another movie with Netflix this year, of course. I asked him, “How’s this year?” He said he was having a great time and it’s getting better and better. Netflix is now more flexible, so Marriage Story is showing for longer in theaters, exclusively, before streaming.

I really want to work with Netflix again, if I have a chance. It was a great experience. They gave me 100%, total creative control to release my director’s cut, which is quite rare in this industry.