2019 — Parasite
It’s the film you keep hearing about — and for good reason. The most recent Best Picture Oscar winner has not only made history by being the first foreign film to receive cinema’s most coveted award, but its themes and story are overwhelmingly timely and executed with the utmost subtlety and talent. The story of rich vs. poor has been around far before film itself was even invented.
It has taken innumerable forms over the years, but Parasite elects to show the relationship between lifestyles when the lower earning family decides to infiltrate and integrate into the other. While initially we know the titular reference is how a bug feeds off a larger predator, it becomes increasingly blurred as who draws life from the other.
The wealthier family’s inability to function without blue collar workers is palpable from the beginning. Class warfare has seen many a battle on the big screen, but Parasite let its interpersonal and familial conflicts boil to an uncomfortable level before exploding in vengeance that appropriately never feels quite cathartic enough.
Image Source: IMDb