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Meet Bong Joon-ho, South Korea's biting film satirist

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Claire Lee, Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2020/reuters/01/06/20200106-bong-joon-ho.jpg"/><figcaption>Bong Joon Ho poses backstage at the 77th Golden Globe Awards with his Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language award for &#x27;Parasite.&#x27; Mike Blake, Reuters</figcaption></figure></div>SEOUL -- South Korea&#x27;s Bong Joon-ho is an acclaimed filmmaker known for dark and genre-hopping thrillers, and his Golden Globe-winning &quot;Parasite&quot; -- a vicious satire about the widening gap between rich and poor -- features all of his trademarks.With a series of critical and commercial hits behind him, Bong is one of South Korea&#x27;s best-known faces, claiming multiple prizes at home and making inroads into Hollywood -- a rarity for an Asian auteur filmmaker.The movie&#x27;s Golden Globe win for best foreign language film is the first award for a Korean in any category at the gala, and comes after the 100th anniversary of Korean cinema in 2019.&quot;Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,&quot; the 50-year-old Bong said through a translator as he accepted the award at the gala in Beverly Hills. &quot;I think we use only just one language -- the cinema.&quot;&quot;Parasite&quot; also took the Palme d&#x27;Or at Cannes last year, and this latest accolade will intensify the Oscar buzz it has been generating as awards season heats up.Once likened by Quentin Tarantino to &quot;Steven Spielberg in his prime,&quot; Bong was among the first wave of South Korean filmmakers to blossom after the country&#x27;s full democratisation in the late 1980s, which opened the door for a cultural renaissance.His &quot;Memories of Murder&quot; -- a 2003 feature film based on real-life serial killings that rattled the nation in the 1980s -- was seen as a metaphor for the repressive society of military rule. Bong&#x27;s 2006 monster blockbuster &quot;The Host&quot; portrayed an incompetent government left helpless in the wake of a disaster. In 2014, parallels were drawn between the film and the Seoul ferry sinking that killed 300, mostly schoolchildren.&quot;Mother&quot; -- a 2009 thriller about the overprotective mother of a mentally disabled boy suspected of murder -- was also a huge success.His 2013 film &quot;Snowpiercer&quot; depicted a dystopian future in which the last humans on Earth -- who survived a failed attempt to stop global warming -- travel endlessly on a train separated by class, and the lower class revolts.Tilda Swinton, who was in &quot;Snowpiercer,&quot; also starred in Bong&#x27;s Netflix-produced 2017 sci-fi action-adventure &quot;Okja&quot; about a country girl trying to save a genetically-engineered beast from a greedy multinational firm.It missed out on a Cannes prize but raised debates about factory farming and animal exploitation. &quot;Bong&#x27;s films come at seminal moments for the Korean film industry,&quot; Jason Bechervaise, a professor at Korea Soongsil Cyber University, told AFP. The unprecedented worldwide acclaim for his latest work, he said, was driven by the fact that &quot;there&#x27;s a great deal of political rage out there exacerbated by a tangible sense of widening social equality, and &#x27;Parasite&#x27; feeds into this very effectively.&quot;Bong was born in Seoul to an elite artistic family -- his maternal grandfather was a renowned novelist while his late father and all of his siblings are university professors in fields including fashion and fine art -- and studied sociology at the South&#x27;s prestigious Yonsei University.He reportedly took part in street protests as a student at Yonsei during the country&#x27;s pro-democracy movement in the 1980s, and once told an interviewer he had been arrested for using petrol bombs.He has also candidly spoken about dealing with severe anxiety while being a celebrated filmmaker, in a country where mental health has long been a taboo topic.Throughout his career, he has often tackled dark and difficult subjects, including violent crime, systematic oppression and the climate crisis. &quot;Resolution is not something Bong might expect to gain from any of the films he makes, but that doesn&#x27;t stop him from using them to exorcise the modern anxieties that plague him,&quot; wrote Jen Yamato of the Los Angeles Times.&quot;Deliciously entertaining genre blenders, his stories tend toward cutting, witty and ultimately humane social critique, twisty puzzle boxes that reflect our world back to us.&quot;Pierce Conran, a Seoul-based film critic and producer, described Bong as a &quot;socially minded and consummate artist,&quot; and said his deft skill as an entertainer -- combined with his other qualities -- has given him a unique ability to connect with global audiences.His Golden Globe win stands as a &quot;significant breakthrough for a foreign film in Hollywood&#x27;s awards season,&quot; he told AFP, adding it would help to establish Bong as &quot;one of the all-time greats of cinema.&quot;<div>© Agence France-Presse</div>

South Korea's Bong Joon-ho is an acclaimed filmmaker known for dark and genre-hopping thrillers, and his Golden Globe-winning "Parasite" -- a vicious satire about the widening gap between rich and poor -- features all of his trademarks.

South Korea's Bong Joon-ho is an acclaimed filmmaker known for dark and genre-hopping thrillers, and his Golden Globe-winning "Parasite" -- a vicious satire about the widening gap between rich and poor -- features all of his trademarks.

Meet Bong Joon-ho, South Korea's biting film satirist

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Meet Bong Joon-ho, South Korea's biting film satirist

Claire Lee,

Agence France-Presse

Published January 06, 2020 03:30 PM PHT

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South Korea

Bong Joon-ho

Golden Globes

Parasite

Oscars

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