Economics
Cannes Winner ‘Parasite’ Has Message for Rich Even Ray Dalio Could Love
- Korean comedy-thriller captures resentment over wealth gap
- It’s become one of the highest-grossing foreign films in U.S.
Life is way too unfair. One family gets to live in a mansion. Another lives in a basement, folding pizza boxes for money and scrounging free WiFi signals. Family No. 2 decides to move in on family No. 1 -- literally.
That’s the conceit of “Parasite,” a new horror-comedy by director Bong Joon-ho, which won top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and is packing art houses in the U.S. The setting could have been San Francisco or London or any other place where the growing gap between the rich and poor is sparking major resentment. But the movie takes place in South Korea, a country where economic development has been dominated by a handful of family-controlled conglomerates and poverty rate is at U.S.-like levels.