Introduction
The transition of Hollywood from the traditional studio system to the modern age has seen directors have more control over the production and style of films. The directors have the freedom to have their style and are viewed as the main drivers behind motion picture production. The movie directors are arguably the real authors of the film, considering that they oversee all the visual and audio nuances that make the motion picture. This is because critical visual features, including camera placement, lighting, and determination of scene length, are determined and controlled by the directors. One such director is Bong Joon-ho, a South Korean nationalist and one of the top film auteurs in modern cinema and Hollywood. Movies by auteurs tend to have a definitive and distinctive element associated with a specific director. In other words, auteur films bare a distinctive personal stamp by the movie director. Bong Joon-ho has been in the limelight for the production of a number of films including Snowpiercer, Parasites, and Okja.
Summary of the Films
The movie Parasites could be regarded as the director’s biggest success so far, considering the levels of accolades garnered, including an Oscar and a Palme d’Or Award. The film tells the story of two families, one belonging to the upper class and the other from a humble background. Kim Ki-woo is a jobless man living with his family in the lower regions of the country. They struggle to make ends meet as no one in the family has a meaningful source of income. Fortunately, Kim Ki-woo gets recommended by a friend to offer tuition to a young lady from the well-off Parks family. He uses this opportunity to elevate his family by getting them to work for the Park family. Life at the Parks’ house is only but a dream to Kim’s family, who are from a poor background. Climbing the social ladder is almost impossible, and there is the only solace in making the best use of the Park family’s absence to enjoy the luxuries in the house. Their fantasy is unfortunately halted when their secret is revealed. What follows is a series of violence and revenge against the two sides leading to murder, bloodshed, and Kim’s family being thrown back to their poor home.
Closely related to the movie Parasites is the movie Snowpiercer. It’s a futuristic movie depicting an apocalyptic world brought about by climate change. Life in the world is non-existence except for people who were on board the train. Life on the train is maintained by the continuous movement of the train. However, classism issues take precedence on the train, leading to a revolt by the lower class due to unfair treatment and unequal distribution of resources. Although still in the same realm, the film Okja highlights sustainability and ethical issues related to meat consumption in the world today. Okja is a tale about a young girl named Mija from a remote North Korean village. Mija lives with her grandfather and a genetically modified pig presented to them by Mirando, one of the leading meat companies in the country. It later turned out that the company was only using this to create a positive image in the eyes of the public while, in a real sense, they had operations in the background where the animals were reared and produced in unfavorable conditions that went against animal rights. In general, the movie exposes the hypocrisy in the corporate world and questions the heavy human dependence on meat consumption.
Distinctive Style by Director
A major distinctive element of style in all three movies is the use of multiple genres in the creation of the movies-something that is the signature stamp of director Bong Joon-ho. Parasites exhibits this multi-genre approach in which a number of genres, including action, comedy, crime thriller, romance, and horror, are all blended to produce the film. Few movies capture as many genres as brilliantly as it is in the movie The Parasite. The audience is first treated to action-filled scenes almost similar to those of a heist film. The film then shifts to a comedy film with incidences of dark humor, mystery and drama. The end is characterized by violence and murders, mostly identified in thriller films. These same features are identified in Snowpiercer which, however, has little comedy and much violence throughout the film. Okjas’ narrative structure resembles that of a fairy tale and exhibits features of science fiction and adventure flicks. It has dark comedy, which appears to be the director’s trademark in all of his works.
Recurring Theme
The most dominating theme in Bong’s films is the issue of classism. Both the Parasites and Snowpiercer highlight the perils of the class strife between the political class, those categorized as the privileged upper class, and trapped and unjustifiable destitute lower-class people. The system is designed to hold the lower class in their status with minimal chances of ever climbing up the social ladder while allowing the upper class lives a comfortable life in opulence. Okja shows the lengths some corporate payers are willing to go to, including using the poor in society to create a falsely positive image in the eyes of the public for the purposes of making profits. Okja uses these films to expose and criticize critical issues in society in the same way as the other works by Bong. The themes are well-imparted in the movie through the director’s use of realism which makes the film more appealing and relatable to the audience. It is, therefore, substantive to surmise that Bong Joon-ho’s films are about social issues affecting the world, including classism and contemporary problems facing society, especially issues of sustainability, such as climate change and food consumption.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Bong Joon-ho’s auteurism is reflected in some of his major works including the films Parasites, Okja and Snowpiercer. These movies’ features and style can be directly attributed to the director, which includes using multiple genres to create one masterpiece of a movie. This style has seen the director win major awards in film production, including an Oscar and A Palme d’Or award, an indication of just how ground-breaking his style is in the modern history of filmmaking. The dominating genre present in all three movies, however, is the use of humor or rather dark comedy in the films. Apart from the Multi-genre approach to the creation of the film, Bong’s films are dominated by the social themes and contemporary issues facing the world. The three films bare a distinctive personal stamp by the movie director, Bong Joon-ho, and depict modern auteurism.