ANIMA is a brand new fifteen-minute short film created in a collaboration between musician Thom Yorke (of Radiohead fame) and director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Punch-Drunk Love, Phantom Thread). For PTA fans, this was a welcome surprise,as Anderson hasn't directed anything since the aforementioned Phantom Thread in 2017. The plot of the short is a little difficult to describe without going into specifics as it's almost certainly metaphorical. Let's just say it follows an unnamed man (Yorke), who attempts to return a lost item in a very strange world.ANIMA could be described as music video - it's scored by Yorke songs and it's simplistic story definitely make it feel like one. However, there is a lot of interesting cinematography and visual storytelling that sets it apart from the thousands of music videos on the market. There is not a single word of dialogue spoken, but every movement tells us everything we need to know about Yorke's leading character. Every action is choreographed like a dance, and the dream-like, sometimes violent, movements are a spectacle to behold, as are is the surreal set design. This short could only have been directed by a true master of cinema, and I highly recommend it. It is, after all, only fifteen minutes of your time.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Disclaimer: I don't really understand how Korean names work and therefore may have made mistakes in spelling, punctuation and order. Feel free to correct me, and sorry about that.
Parasite (AKA Gisaengchung) is the latest film from South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho. It stars longtime Joon-ho collaborator Song Kang-ho as Ki-taek, the father of a lower class family in South Korea. When son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) gets a job as an English tutor to the daughter in a wealthy family, Ki-taek devises a plan to infiltrate the house in the form of a driver, a housekeeper (in the case of mother Yeon-kyo) and an art teacher (in the case of daughter Ki-jung). However, they soon discover that things are not all they seem in the large house the wealthy family occupies. Parasite has already been showered with festival awards, winning the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Festival, as well as the top prize at this year's Sydney Film Festival. All that praise is well-deserved. Parasite is a fantastic deconstruction of class and wealth. Let's start with the screenplay, which is phenomenal. The film is much funnier than you might expect from a premise that doesn't really inspire laughter. It's hard to make English-speaking audiences laugh with subtitles but my theatre was loving the comedy in this. Don't get me wrong; this is very much a dark comedy, with a spectacular third-act twist. Every element is well-set up and comes into play later; I find it pretty astonishing that Joon-ho turned this film around in two years, as it feels like decades of thought have been put into its complex, deceptively simple plot. It is unpredictable but never cheats the audience. Every character is great, but special attention has to be given to the characterisation of Ki-taek. I wouldn't really call him the main character but it is often his actions which act as the catalyst for the plot points. The script weaves in subtext in a way that doesn't feel forced, making the commentary essential to every motivation and event rather than forcing it upon the story. The characters never explain what they're feeling; the emotion is all palpable.
Part of this is the performances, and all four of the central thespians are very strong in their roles. Again, Kang-ho is the standout. They all have great chemistry and their interactions feel naturalistic. All of the supporting characters do some exceptional work, too. The cinematography is exceptional, boasting many great examples of composition and camera movement. The direction is also great; Joon-ho mounts tension and suspense in an almost Hitchcockian way I rarely see these days, and he never skimps on the payoff, either. All of this culminates in a brilliantly edited sequence that is both cathartic and brutal (or perhaps cathartic through its brutality), a final expression of rage at the unfairness of the South Korean class system. For such a specific problem, it is surprisingly universal and all the characters are supremely relateable.
In short, Parasite is nothing less than a masterpiece that could honestly be taught in film classes. Every person who worked on the film is clearly at their best and it is one of the most engaging and shocking experiences I've had at the cinema in months. It is easily the best film of the year so far and I would even say that if it had been released last year, it would have been my favourite film of that year, too. It's the kind of film that feels destined to become a classic (at least among cinephiles), the rare kind of foreign language film that could find a place in, say, the iMDB Top 250, and hold it there for the foreseeable future. Everybody needs to see this film, and I encourage every one of you to find where it's being shown near you and see it. I don't care if you have to drive for hours, do it.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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