Here are some Parasite Movie Facts
Parasite Movie Facts – The South Korean film Parasite is the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
It is also one of only three films in history to win Oscars and Cannes’s highest reward. This was first created to be a play. Director Bong Joon-ho revealed in an interview, based on the article in Mental Floss, that this idea came about when his friend who is a stage actor suggested that he should create a play.
The director thought of how he could feature a story with just two houses. Then, he came up with an idea of a poor house and a rich house. At that time, he was working on post-production of Snowpiercer and this made him develop an interest in the difference between the rich and the poor.
The film is highly influenced by film director Alfred Hitchcock. Director Bong Joon-ho is a big fan of the English film director.
Two of the characters in Parasite are tutors. This was inspired by Bong’s job as a tutor in the past, as well as from French sisters Christine and Léa Papin who worked as live-in maids in the 1930s and killed the wife and daughter of their employer in Le Mans, France.
The use of CGI or computer-generated imagery in this movie was abundant but viewers probably did not notice this. 400 shots out of 960 used CGI. The house’s first floor was built on an outdoor movie lot but the second floor was completely CGI when seen from the outside. Bong had a 3D version of the whole mansion on his iPad and with this, he was able to navigate where the actors would be, and it was like a video game.
Parasite’s Korean title is Gisaengchung and it can mean “parasitic.” This term came from gisaeng and chung. Some details were changed for the international audience. Ki-woo Kim’s faked diploma is from Oxford University but for the South Korean version, it was from Yonsei University. The Korean messaging app KakaoTalk was also changed to WhatsApp.
Bong chose the cruel and sad ending for the movie because he felt that it was the only way to end it. “It’s quite cruel and sad but I thought it was being real and honest with the audience. You know and I know—we all know that this kid isn’t going to be able to buy that house. I just felt that frankness was right for the film, even though it’s sad,” the Korean filmmaker said.
The movie’s ending showed that Ki-woo was outlining his “plan” which was quite optimistic but the director opted for the final shot showcasing that he is meant to fail.
Another movie with astonishing facts is The Hunchback of Notre Dame.