Director Bong: Black-and-white Parasite a more intimate film
Seoul – Watching a black-and-white re-release of his Oscar-winning movie Parasite will give viewers a “different” and “strange” experience, director Bong Joon-ho said on Wednesday (Feb 19), ahead of the new version opening in South Korean theatres next week.
It is currently showing at in Singapore at Golden Village Funan, Cathay Orchard and The Projector, and has grossed $1.13 million at the local box office.
The South Korean filmmaker has always had a fondness for monochrome films, saying they give viewers a more intimate visual experience.
“When the colours are gone, you can focus more on the actors’ facial expressions and their eyes” and nuanced details, Bong told reporters in Seoul after his triumphant return from the US.
Parasite’s historic Best Picture Oscar – the first ever for a non-English-language movie – and three other wins for Best Director, Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay, have created huge excitement in his home country, whose cultural output has gained popularity around the world.
Bong said: “I understand that the film will be remembered as a historic affair inevitably, but I hope the movie can be remembered as a film itself.”
The movie is a dark satire tale about the widening gap between rich and poor, following a poor family infiltrating a wealthy household.
All unemployed at the start of the story, the poor family members live in a dingy, roach-infested basement flat whose damp odour clings to them beyond its confines.
The black-and-white version, which Bong created along with cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, iIs his second film to be rendered into monochrome after his 2009 thriller Mother.
It was shown at an international film festival last month, when Bong said a viewer told him that the black-and-white version “makes the odour in the film feel more real”.
“I’ve always admired classical movies – there used to be a time period where all movies were made in black and white,” he said.
“I’ve been curious about what the movie would have looked like if I were living in the 1930s.”
Parasite’s distributors had mounted an intense promotional campaign ahead of the Academy Awards, Bong said, involving at least 600 media interviews and 100 question-and-answer sessions – at one point giving lead actor Song Kang-ho nosebleeds from exhaustion. - AFP
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