David Stys

It was the balance between tenderness and care on one side and the harsh realities of an abused childhood on the other that might make you cry. The world Chiron comes from is harsh and dark. Your mom’s more interested in buying and smoking ‘rocks’ than she is into degrading you, and she seems pretty into that. The walk home from school is more likely to end with a black eye than anything else. Be sure to watch for the pain in his face. It’s only a couple times you see him smile. It was a chance encounter with an older man that provided Chiron with the first source of a calm presence in his life. It was Juan’s example of kindness to a young Chiron that you see glimpses of throughout the story. The story for me, ends in an awkward place. It felt like there was more to unravel before ending. His life as an adult was something worth exploring more, in my opinion. It’s a story of pain, but it’s equally a story of the power of gentleness to mend a broken heart. It’s a story of how much those negative influences can bring a young man down and send him on a path leading to a life of pain, it’s also a story of being pushed in a better direction by the right influences. His life doesn’t turn out like a dream, but he’s here and moving forward thanks in part to the small kindness he received as a young man.

Parasite (2019) Review: I’m so ... confused. My emotions just got off one of those rides at the carnival where you go up and down all while spinning in a closed box. If you’re lucky you’ll catch a little projectile vomit from your neighbors spinning around you. This is the story of how a clever little family outwitted itself. This is the story of ‘what goes around comes around’. This is the story of the poor vs the rich. This story isn’t a single story. There’s a lot going on here and depending on whose perspective you choose to see it from you may see something completely different. Some will see a confusing tragedy. Some will get an ‘Ocean’s 11’ heist feeling and be pulled into that story. Some will see it from a rich man’s point of view. I chose to see it consistently from the viewpoint of the poor and too-clever-for-their-own-good family’s view. Enjoying their crafty takeover and moments of glory when the family was home alone. It’ll put you in a weird place to pull for that team, though. You’ll find that you’re rooting for some folks that have potential to create quite some chaos and destruction. You might be a little unsure of which team to join when it starts to unravel as well. So choose your ride carefully and don’t be surprised if it leaves you a bit dizzy. But a good dizzy.

First, a word of caution: this movie should be classified as a ‘horror’ and not a ‘drama/thriller’. If you watch this movie and find it more ‘thrilling’ than ‘horrifying’ then maybe you’d better head off and join this thrilling cult. Besides this, in this movie a ‘black guy dies first’, which seems to be one of the telling signs of a proper horror. Another thing to note before watching this movie: if observing all forms of human despair in graphical terms doesn’t sound like your cup of tea then better to turn away because the first moments will already have you gasping for breath. Without getting into the plot and focusing more on the raw emotions experienced, I can’t say I’ve watched a movie that has elicited such a wide array of emotions from me. From guilt that sinks down your core to confusion that twists your face in a ball to absolute disgust. It’s all there and they do a great job whipping you from one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s two things in particular that we’re done well to draw such an emotional response: it’s the juxtaposition between purity and evil and the audio. The movie is primarily set in the wide, expansive nature of Northern Scandinavia. Greens and blues and the freshness of summer are on full display. All the while the smell of death wafts by in the breeze. The very moment you get lulled by the fairytale landscape, it’s all taken from you and flipped on it’s head. The screeching pitches and low drawn out tones used throughout the movie work on a vibratory level to send a chill down your spine followed by a pleasant breeze of emotions the next moment. Feels like whiplash. It might be good to keep the remote nearby to lessen this effect at times because it gets pretty intense. Final word: it might help to treat this movie like a messed up acid trip. And don’t forget to breath.

What gives you chills in every moment of this film is how uniquely creepy and abnormal a human the Joker is. Yet what drew more of my attention is the fact that everyday ‘normal’ people skirt these same issues, just to lessers extents. The life he lives in his head is starkly different than the one he lives in reality, and most people whether they realize it or not are living minor fantasies that only exist in their heads as well. The experiences he had as a child, although unrecognized by him directly, play a large role in his psyche as an adult. Most people as well continue playing out scripts that were subconsciously programmed in their minds from forgotten events. The Joker’s tortured state of mind seems so close to so many ‘sane’ people and so far away. The Joker is all of us in our most twisted states.