How Bong Joon-ho Invented the Weird World of <em>Parasite</em>
This story contains mild spoilers for the film Parasite.
Bong Joon-ho never met a genre he couldn’t subvert. For almost 20 years, the South Korean director has been making movies that span every category. Memories of Murder (2003), the true-crime detective story that made him a star in his country, is notable for how it mixes melancholia with biting satire. The Host (2006), a huge crossover hit, breaks every rule in the monster-movie rule book and is all the better for it. Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017), two English-language sci-fi allegories, are as funny as they are terrifying.
As Korean cinema has produced some of the most exciting filmmaking of the century, Bong has been at the forefront, taking wild swings with outlandish stories. But his new film, Parasite, one of the best of the year, is a thrillingly restrained work, largely confined to two locations: the homes of the wealthy Park family and the poor Kim family. It examines what happens when the Kims, one by one, start working for the Parks—after which the story develops in some shocking ways, a Bong specialty. The Atlantic spoke with the director about the development of the film, the way Parasite is playing to international audiences, and his approach to allegory and genre-bending. This interview has been edited.
I know initially started out as a play. What was the genesis of that
