Parasites drives and forces a Hollywood cycle change

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Basically, and simplifying a lot, there are two ways to change things. Or fighting what is in a radical way, even if in his ruin we go life. Or proposing a different model than him alone and without more ally that the evidence is responsible for making the same reality obsolete. The reflection is from Richard Buckminster Fuller, inventor, builder of the world's first geodesic dome, visionary and one of the first to make explicit (before even Joaquin Phoenix) that the planet's resources are scarce. And the calves too. Ephemeralization is what he called his conviction that more must be done with less. Well, early Monday morning and thanks Bong Joon Ho who knows if Hollywood attended its particular ephemeral epiphany. Suddenly, he found the key.

For years, the Film Academy has turned its annual convention into a kind of coven. Faced with his own decline (and who knows if the cinema in general as the great leisure industry) has endeavored to reward himself with a stubbornness near simple illness. Any film from before even of The artist by Michel Hazanavicius that had the film itself as an argument was immediately indicated as a favorite. And even savior. There was the unreasonable conviction that only by recovering something like essences could the possibility of redemption. Year after year, much of the most notable was ignored in a heartless effort to disprove reality, although with its ruin it was the very life of cinema. Last year's episode was one of the most eye catching chapters. Given the irrefutable obviousness of Rome, of Cuarón, it was preferred ... Does anyone remember Green Book?

The grace of Bong Joon Ho is precisely to propose a new model. And maybe a change of cycle. It's not about anything revolutionary. Or not in the sense of radically new. The Korean director himself ironic at the press conference after picking up his four Oscars (screenplay, direction, international films and no more) about how weird it was all: «Yes, I am a very strange person. I have just done what I have always done with the great artists that I have worked with all my life: with producer Kwak, with my co-writer Han Jin Won and with all my actors. This movie is exactly the same as all my previous works. Why has this been chosen? I can't find an answer to the puzzle. It's all very surreal » . Indeed, the key is that. He has not moved. He is still busy in each of the obsessions that have defined his work since it was released with Barking Dog, little biting in 2000. It is Hollywood that has changed direction. And even ambition.

Dedicated to Scorsese

Suddenly, the Oscars choose a film that, contrary to what happened in all previous years, looks at the present to demand an explanation from him. Neither biopic of prestige nor adaptation of time or musical more or less bright, more or less moldy, about the dream factory. It is cinema that by force of fleshlessness can only be qualified as a politician. No more The surprising thing is right next to it, at the foot of asphalt, in the same place where the Scorsese generation (to whom the prize was not in vain) collected each of its stories . In Korea, yes, but the injustice, inequality and terror are identical. Always and anywhere. But not only that, the way chosen by Bong Joon Ho to address the argument is none other than closely following the more established and classic structures that make up the genre cinema. That which is always obviated, repudiated or remedied. The success of the film worldwide since its triumph in Cannes, and especially in the United States, where it has collected more than 35 million dollars, endorse it and indicate the way. And so Hollywood has wanted to see it recovering perhaps the old tradition of importing the best talent. From Ernst Lubitsch to Billy Wilder through Fritz Lang or Douglas Sirk, they all came from outside. Just look at the new model, which Buckminster Fuller would say, to witness how reality is suddenly obsolete.

Bong Joon Ho affirms that Okja (2017), his previous film, was a co-production between Korea and the United States. « Parasites , on the other hand, is a purely Korean tape. That makes me think that, perhaps, the deeper I go into the things around me, the more universal the argument is, ”he says. And there, again, the key.

If a little history is made, it can be seen that the dilemma settled on Monday morning seems anything but new. Already in the 50s, in the decade of the blacklist, the institution managed to make the vote of its members flee from dangerous films. The noir was there as the most palpable evidence of the red threat. In 1957, explicitly, no film stained by someone suspected of being a communist (those who refused to collaborate with the Committee on Anti-American Activities) could be a candidate. The rules said it. An American in Paris, Around the World in 80 days s The bridge over the river Kwa i (all winners) were the kind of blockbuster that should represent the industry. With all that that involved deterioration and loss.

Privilege of the privileged

A decade later, with the collapse of the studies, the trend was the same: to ignore people like Hitchcock (who never won) and reward My fair lady instead of the Red Telephone ?, we flew to Moscow. And so until the emergence of the New Hollywood had its fair reflection in prizes such as the Cowboy Midnight or The Hunter, not to mention the canonical The Godfather. They were the parasites of their time. Of course, the bland Rocky (the same year of Taxi driver) and Kramer vs. also sneaked in . Kramer But the fever would not last, the 80s would arrive and films like Carros de fuego, Gandhi, The force of affection or, later, Shakespeare in love , would be seen at the top of the table with the same force that not so long ago seen, for example, The king's speech or the one directed by Peter Farrelly. All of them punished by oblivion, inconsequence or just laziness.

Let's say that from time to time Hollywood and the Oscars impose something similar to a purge. What has happened now is that the historical fact that the film chosen for such a serious task is the first in non-English speaking history makes it a remedy rather than just radical. In fact, it is hard to understand so much enthusiasm for a film that is there to refute everything, including that enthusiasm. That a story against the privileges of the privileged is chosen by precisely those privileged rather than privilege is not only a clumsy tongue twister, it is also the best example of cynicism that defines us as culture, as a society and as a nightmare. In the paradox, so to speak, is the punishment.

In recent years we have witnessed a fight not so veiled between television networks like Netflix and everyone else to impose their criteria. The Academy has resisted until almost nonsense. Last year the victim was, as has been said, Rome and he has fallen so much History of a marriage, with only one mention, and Scorsese, who has gone completely empty. And there Bong Joon Ho arrived to force him to look away. The referee, salvation and purge is him.

«Maybe this is a change that changes the way you vote. Perhaps it will cease to distinguish between American and international cinema. Perhaps only the cinema counts, ”says the winner of the Palme d'Or and in his sentence it is not difficult to guess the dome that, like the invention of Buckminster Fuller, supports what comes from now. We will see.

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