Variety | Writers on Writers: Scribes Weigh in on Their Favorite Films From 2019

Franklin Leonard ‘On Parasite’

It is altogether appropriate that the movie is called “Parasite,” if only because it is very much an organism that has burrowed its way into my brain and will for the rest of my natural life benefit from living there, if only from the trickle of money that will inevitably come as I continue to tell, coax, cajole and bully everyone I know into seeing it with the additional caution that their experience will be better if I tell them nothing about the movie before they do (which is to say: you should pay to see the movie and your experience will be better if you know nothing about it ahead of time at all).

An original screenplay that goes in on class, security, parenthood, childhood, art, technology, and any number of other themes that I discover each day anew, because it just. will. not. leave. my. head. (It’s just all so metaphorical.) An original screenplay that treats these issues on a human level and a societal level — simultaneously, effortlessly, and — somehow — with extraordinary specificity and uncommon universality. An original screenplay that does all of these things with near constant humor, an always growing sense of foreboding, and then … again, you need to see the movie, and better that I don’t finish that sentence.

No film this intricately constructed has any right to have this much insight into the inherent messiness of being a human being at this time in human history. No film this invested in the inherent messiness of being a human being at this time in human history has any right to be this precisely constructed. It’s a magic trick