There’s a scene in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (which you must see: still out in theatres) where the hired-help family hides under the table and the rich dude talks to his wife about how bad his chauffeur smells (unaware that said chauffeur is under the table, hearing every word). And rich dude goes on … and on … getting more detailed about the KIND of bad smell it is, its shadings, its specificity, iwhat it reminds him of, he smells kind of like a turnip, maybe … no, not a turnip … more like … The camera goes back and forth: from the man speaking, to the man underneath the table, listening.
When I saw it in the theatre, at first the audience started laughing. The scene is a real cliffhanger, and the cuts back and forth from the rich dude to the chauffeur under the table, creates the comedic tension, the event of the scene. But eventually, the laughter of the audience faded, and it became this whole other kind of scene, with gigantic and urgent class/political implications, the contempt of the rich for the poor, bristling with a sense of unfairness, of outrage (how are you supposed to smell like roses when the sewer floods into your basement apartment? when you can’t ever bathe?), the hurt that comes with that unfairness, the shame of smelling bad … and it was wild, the experience, because I could feel the audience ride that wave together. It was like Bong Joon-ho set us up. He knew we would find the sequence funny. He means us to. It IS funny. But the longer you think about it and sit in it, the less funny it becomes. And you really REALLY have to trust an audience to build a sequence like that. Because maybe some audiences WOULDN’T stop laughing. Maybe some audiences would continue to laugh, not caring about the pain on the chauffeur’s face, not picking up on the critique. It’s a possibility, a risk, and Bong Joon-ho takes that risk.
The whole thing represents such mastery on the part of Bong Joon-ho: he understood the event he wanted to portray, and he knew he needed to control it so that it moved from funny to awful. This amazes me even more since film directors work in a vacuum (no audience present as you’re filming), and so the director has to know what he wants and make every choice with meticulous care.
Ask any actor who’s acted in a comedic play for a live audience: It’s hard to make an audience start laughing and then stop laughing and segue into a whole different kind of experience, at the exact moment when you need them to.
Masterful.
The kiss-scene is my favorite scene in cinema history.