Films to Re-Watch: Barking Dogs Never Bite
I imagine my journey with Bong was not an uncommon one: I saw Snowpiercer and Okja first and then saw Parasite. After not being wowed by those first two films I saw, Parasite felt eye-opening. I then went back and watched everything he did, and none of them hit as hard as Parasite did (but I still mostly liked them). And there I sat for a half-decade before I ever revisited Bong again. I have finally done so, and here is how I am feeling about his films now.
6. Snowpiercer [2013]
Snowpiercer takes a tantalizing premise and manages to do whatever the opposite of capitalize is on it.
The apocalypse has happened. The surviving members of humanity are all on this never-ending train ride – the only place life can still exist. The train was founded on the idea of an oppressive class system. Chris Evans, Captain fucking America, then leads a rebellion of the lowest caste against the elites. And therein lies the problem. Chris Evans.
Evans just does not pop off the screen here in the way that he needed to for this to work. I do not particularly dislike Evans, and I actually think he did a fine job in the rather thankless Captain America role. Outside of Marvel though, he has struggled in many other situations and has not had a ton of artistic success. He just is not a movie star (Captain America is the movie star), and this needed to be a movie star role. As far as movies that do not quite work go though, this one was at least interesting and even more so in the context of Bong’s career.
5. Memories of Murder [2003]
Later Bong films can be very hit or miss, but I always find their thematic ambitions and explorations of global failures to be charming. This early Bong film though, Memories of Murder works best as a procedural executed with panache that grips you at all times. It is missing the qualities that draw you into the later – if occasionally more flawed Bong films. I did not find myself as entranced by it as it seems most other people are. I do not know what to say about that beyond I guess I should see if it hits more on the next watch.
4. Okja [2017]
Okja is a pessimistic film about the world; it is ultimately a film about exploitation. Everyone is out for themselves, and everyone is just trying to get theirs at the expense of everyone else. Everyone is trying to delude themselves into thinking they are the One Good Person, but ultimately we are all just stuck in this system we cannot escape.
It is a story of a child learning that these are the true conditions of the world. That she can trust no one but herself. It is a world where, in the end, no matter what emotions are displayed, it’s only gold (literally) that matters.
The movie has the opportunity to do a cop-out ending and have Mija’s desperate pleas save Okja. But the movie does not settle for that. For it is gold that saves Mija’s beloved Okja and brings Okja home to her. She cannot do anything for any of the others (okay she manages to smuggle one baby super pig also). She cannot make the world a better place. She can save one though.
3. Mother [2009]
Mother is film that openly explores many important themes and issues in the world. Ableism. Classism. Motherhood. The failure of institutions and how they exist to protect themselves and not the people. There is also a genuine whodunnit involved, as the titular mother desperately tries to solve a murder to exonerate her son. It all comes together in a rather uneven manner much like the majority of Bong’s films. The ambition is there, and that should be noted and commended. There is something undeniably missing though. It is as if Bong spend his first few decades in film trying out different ideas even if it lead to decidedly imperfect results.
2. The Host [2006]
This is a fun Godzilla knockoff. A United States military base poisons a Korean river and causes their own sea monster to attack people. Something, something, “I know writers who use subtlety, and they’re all cowards.” Bong does not settle to tell a simple B-movie story that is in and out in 90 minutes. He instead really dives deep into the main family’s dynamics and tries to craft a real film. As often with Bong though, I cannot help but wonder if this would be better as just a straight genre exercise that does not pretend it is anything more.
1. Parasite [2019]
Capitalism is a deadly bug that gets inside all of us and turns us into blood-sucking monsters. While this instant classic film that was immediately celebrated as such obviously gives us plenty of opportunities to laugh at the rich and makes us want to eat them, the themes of the film are more substantively explored through economically poor family – the Kims.
The Kims cannot afford phone service. They cannot afford Wi-Fi. None of them are employed. They are hustling for what little money they manage to earn. But they are not at the bottom of the social ladder. Why? They do have shelter – they even have a relatively spacious apartment. It’s a crappy basement apartment, but an apartment all the same.
That may not seem significant textually, but it does when you see how they treat this recurring homeless man who frequently urinates near/on their home. The Kims treat him like scum. They speak of him and to him like he is scum. Like he is worthless. Then the Kims luck into a scheme where they can get four different jobs working for the same obscenely rich family. There is a problem though. Two of those jobs already have workers. They never give those workers a second thought though and promptly find nefarious ways to scheme them out of their positions so they can have them instead.
It all culminates in the Kims and these other working class people destroying each other’s lives and not getting anything good from it whatsoever. We all live in this monstrous world of capitalism, and it is rotting our souls from the inside out. It is a system that causes us to dehumanize each other.
Bong’s 2019 film was his crowning achievement. All of his previous films felt like practice for this moment.
The Reel World 