Missed watching Bong Joon-Ho’s highly acclaimed film Parasite in the theatres? Or just want to watch it again to notice all the subtext? You can now watch it as many times as you like on Amazon Prime.
Parasite’s release on Prime Video marks its exclusive India debut of the film. It has been released in Korean with English as well as Hindi subtitles.
The South Korean film made history by becoming the first foreign language film to bag an Academy Award in the Best Picture category. It also won Bong Joon-Ho the Best Director award for a non-English film. The film won a third Oscar as well, for Best Original Screenplay.
Full of dark humour, poignancy and suspense, Parasite revolves around two families – one quite rich and well-to-do, the other one poor, who will do anything to make ends meet. The commentary on class discrimination, greed, and apathy unfolds when the worlds of these families meet, and they enter into a precarious symbiotic relationship of sorts.
Apart from the Oscars, the film has won many other accolades, such as the 2020 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2019 Palme d’OR, the 2020 BAFTA Awards for Best Foreign Lanugauge Film, and Best Original Screenplay, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for 2020, among many others.
The film stirred a bit of a controversy in Kollywood though, when the producer of 1999 Tamil romantic comedy Minsara Kanna claimed that Parasite had been copied from the Tamil film. The producer, PL Thenappan, had also said that he will seek compensation from the Korean film’s makers. Minsara Kanna starred Vijay, Rambha, Monica Castelino and Khushbu. The film revolved around how, for the sake of a man’s desire for a woman, the entire family begins to work in her house to get her family’s approval.
However, while the premise seems similar, TNM had reported earlier that the characters, motives and trajectory of the story in the two films is completely different.