Watch: A Beginner’s Guide to Bong Joon-ho | Little White Lies

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Watch: A Beginner’s Guide to Bong Joon-ho

03 Feb 2020

Words by Will Webb

A young Asian man with short brown hair, wearing a green jacket and looking distressed, standing in a city setting.
A young Asian man with short brown hair, wearing a green jacket and looking distressed, standing in a city setting.
To cel­e­brate the release of Par­a­site, check out this video primer to South Korea’s finest cin­e­mat­ic export.

A train cir­cles the frozen world at high speed, the rem­nants of human­i­ty inside. A fam­i­ly hunt the mutat­ed mon­ster who kid­napped their daugh­ter. A young woman befriends a super-pig and goes on a world­wide caper with it.

These are the worlds of Bong Joon-ho, and under­neath their at times pulpy genre exte­ri­ors lies a morass of com­plex char­ac­ters. Begin­ning his career with a num­ber of box office hits in South Korea, Bong built on his suc­cess with two Eng­lish-lan­guage fea­tures, Snow­piercer and Okja.

Now he’s returned to his roots with Par­a­site, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and is the first Kore­an film to be nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar.

In a new video essay, Will Webb takes a clos­er look at what makes Bong such a com­pelling film­mak­er. Watch below and let us know your thoughts @LWLies

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