Parasite- A Mise-en-scène Analysis MTL-4830 / Spring 2024 / noah perkins

Overview

Parasite was released in 2019 with a lot of success. Critics and audiences alike agreed that Parasite was phenomenal, so much so that it won best picture at the Oscars in 2020, the first-ever, and only, international film to do so. Now, four years later, it is the most-watched film on the social platform, Letterboxd, and has become an introduction to foreign cinema for many people.

The scene that I chose exemplifies everything great about Parasite. It is eerie and everything is intentional, creating an atmosphere that keeps audiences hooked for its two-hour and twelve-minute runtime. Considine & Haley’s (1999) 4P framework for Mise-en-scene, will allow us to understand what makes the scene great and get a look into the intentions of Bong Joon-Ho and his magnum opus.

Posture

The positions of the characters in relation to each other is everything in Parasite. The film tackles the divide between the upper and lower class, which Bong Joon-Ho cleverly shows through subtle techniques.

In the scene, there is the maid, Moon Gwang, (pictured left) and the mother of the house, Yeon Kyo (pictured right). These characters are sitting at eye level, implying that they are of similar social status. Moon, however, is not of the same social class, but in this scene, they are equals. Moon is positioned in a way that shows she is intrigued by the story that Yeon is telling. We also learn a lot about Cheo by how she tells the story. She initially tells the story, smiling and carefree, but after she is done telling the story, she is frantic and looks worrisome at the thought of her son's seizure (pictured below).

Next, we move over her shoulder to see her son (Da Song) who is eating his birthday cake. He is hunched over it and is the only thing he has on his mind, which is then disrupted by one of the most disturbing shots in the film. We only see the top of a man’s head, down to his eyes. We do not see Da Song’s seizure but it is described to us and eventually happens on-screen later in the film.

Position

A lot of the same things apply to this category as Posture. Once again, Moon and Yeon are sitting at eye level, signifying their equal status at the time. The positioning of Da Song in front of the fridge is also intentional. Him being as close as he is to the fridge shows how excited he was to eat the cake, as he did not take it to a more optimal place to eat it, like the table which was right next to him. The positioning of the man’s face is probably the most interesting and important. For one, he is poor and Bong Joon-Ho uses stairs to signify social class and the man is barely peeking his head over the top of the stairs. From this we can infer, even before we know, that he is not as rich as the family living in the house. He also is referred to as a ghost, hinting at the ignorance that the family has of the lower-class population. He is also just positioned in a way that makes him look terrifying.

Point of View

The camera is placed in a way that makes us feel like spectators to the unfolding events. When Yeon is speaking we focus on her face, which is to show us her reaction while telling the story. This scene's purpose is to establish concern for Da Song, which is done via his mother's feelings towards his seizure. We then watch as the camera moves over her shoulder and we see the fridge open, along with a cake on the ground. This helps to transition the audience into the story. It is a beautiful use of the camera and allows the audience to follow along in a fun way that isn’t just cutting to Da Song eating his cake. The camera is even positioned in such a way that we can see Yeon point to it, which takes a lot of coordination among your actors and camera crew. The point of view when seeing Da Song eating his cake is pretty neutral and doesn't tell us much, but how we see the “ghost” tells us a lot. We see him from Da Song’s perspective which puts us into his shoes and helps us to feel the same fear that he felt.

Props

The most notable prop is the cake. The cake at first is used to transition into a story, which is done extremely well. Once we transition into the story it acts as a symbol of money and being rich. We are told that the icing was really good and that Da Song couldn’t stop thinking about it. The fact that Da Song is able to go down into the kitchen and eat his birthday cake is a sign that he is richer than the man he sees. As we learn later, the man lives in the basement of the house and was most likely coming up for food, or even the cake. The man has extremely wide eyes, which shows how much he wants the cake, not just that he looks scary.

Conclusion

Parasite is a film that takes its own creative choices to help the audience better understand the story and the characters. Everything within the frame is intentional, even if the audience is unable to understand what some of these creative choices mean on a first watch. Bong Joon-Ho is able to subconsciously influence the audience with subtle things like posture, positioning, point of view, and props. All of this cultivates in one of the most critically acclaimed films to ever come out of the film industry, and the most successful foreign film of all time.

Refrences

parasite makes oscar history

most watched letterboxd films

Media in this analysis has been compiled for educational purposes.