Why architecture should have won a best supporting role in ‘Parasite’
The Academy Award-winning movie masterfully uses design to reveal the intricacies of class and inequality.
Sunday night, at the 92nd Academy Awards, South Korean smash hit Parasite took home four golden trophies. The movie’s best-picture win made it the first non-English-language film to do so in Oscars history—the cherry on top of the industry’s recognition for best original screenplay, best foreign-language film, and best director too. Bong Joon-ho, the film’s director, is known throughout Hollywood for his razor-sharp cinematic eye and humorously dark imagination, but his lesser-known skillset as a cartoonist who storyboards each scene of his movies may explain why the film nabbed nominations for best film editing and production design as well. In Parasite, architecture is used for its aesthetic value and also for its power as a storytelling device, making this film an extraordinary study in how our built environments create narratives that are both within our control and outside of it.