In cinema, one of the most difficult senses to render through image is smell. Most of the time, it is acting, sometimes strong, as in this scene, that overcomes this difficulty. In Parasite, the Kim family, who live by their wits in an unsanitary slum, have succeeded in inserting themselves into the life of a very well-to-do family, the Parks. The son, initially hired as the eldest daughter's tutor, has managed to trick his father into being a driver, his mother into being a housekeeper and his sister into being the youngest child's art coach, although none of them have the required qualifications. The rich family is completely unaware of this scheme. The sequence begins in the son's room, bent over doodles that his mother thinks are future Basquiat, at the sound of the doorbell announcing his father's return; he leaps up, the camera literally flying away as he reaches the ground floor, revealing the luxurious interior of the house, like a gleaming cube of cleanliness, wealth and transparency. The slow movement of the camera, the opera music that fills the room, even the perfect choreography of the boy throwing himself into his father's arms: everything seems perfect. However, as the viewer knows, there is a grain of sand in the wheels of this ideal picture. The very rich and the very poor in an ultra-capitalist society live in separate worlds. With one exception: when one is in the service of the other, inducing an inevitable physical proximity... In this case, there are rules: the servants must be invisible. Everyone must stay in their place without crossing the lines... Which the Kims do at the slightest opportunity, and in particular here when the father, on the sly, pinches his wife's buttocks. Mr. Kim is overwhelmed with packages, he literally disappears and no one pays any attention to him. That is until the innocent boy approaches the driver and sniffs him ostensibly, like an animal; then he rushes up to the housekeeper and sniffs her as well. He is reprimanded, such a lapse in manners will not do, yet he is the one who is about to expose the deception, as he drives the point home - they "all smell the same" - right down to Jessica, his art coach. In this satire, the director, in the mode of a grating joke, dares: poverty cannot be seen, one can always dress, do one's hair, change one's manners, as all the Kims do; but it does have a smell, that of fried food, of damp habitats, of the city's sewers that pour into certain districts. The director makes smell one of the key points in the screenplay, when the Kims are on the verge of being unmasked. The smell of poverty becomes a tragi-comic, farcical leitmotif, immediately condemning all the Kims' hopes of escaping their social condition.
Comment
In cinema, one of the most difficult senses to render through image is smell. Most of the time, it is acting, sometimes strong, as in this scene, that overcomes this difficulty. In Parasite, the Kim family, who live by their wits in an unsanitary slum, have succeeded in inserting themselves into the life of a very well-to-do family, the Parks. The son, initially hired as the eldest daughter's tutor, has managed to trick his father into being a driver, his mother into being a housekeeper and his sister into being the youngest child's art coach, although none of them have the required qualifications. The rich family is completely unaware of this scheme. The sequence begins in the son's room, bent over doodles that his mother thinks are future Basquiat, at the sound of the doorbell announcing his father's return; he leaps up, the camera literally flying away as he reaches the ground floor, revealing the luxurious interior of the house, like a gleaming cube of cleanliness, wealth and transparency. The slow movement of the camera, the opera music that fills the room, even the perfect choreography of the boy throwing himself into his father's arms: everything seems perfect. However, as the viewer knows, there is a grain of sand in the wheels of this ideal picture. The very rich and the very poor in an ultra-capitalist society live in separate worlds. With one exception: when one is in the service of the other, inducing an inevitable physical proximity... In this case, there are rules: the servants must be invisible. Everyone must stay in their place without crossing the lines... Which the Kims do at the slightest opportunity, and in particular here when the father, on the sly, pinches his wife's buttocks. Mr. Kim is overwhelmed with packages, he literally disappears and no one pays any attention to him. That is until the innocent boy approaches the driver and sniffs him ostensibly, like an animal; then he rushes up to the housekeeper and sniffs her as well. He is reprimanded, such a lapse in manners will not do, yet he is the one who is about to expose the deception, as he drives the point home - they "all smell the same" - right down to Jessica, his art coach. In this satire, the director, in the mode of a grating joke, dares: poverty cannot be seen, one can always dress, do one's hair, change one's manners, as all the Kims do; but it does have a smell, that of fried food, of damp habitats, of the city's sewers that pour into certain districts. The director makes smell one of the key points in the screenplay, when the Kims are on the verge of being unmasked. The smell of poverty becomes a tragi-comic, farcical leitmotif, immediately condemning all the Kims' hopes of escaping their social condition.