An historical win.
Last night, Parasite cleaned up at the Oscars – and deservedly so too.
Director Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean absorbing and really quite moving class commentary has become the first ever film not in the English language to pick up the Best Picture award.
The film also walked away with the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film, with Bong himself nabbing the ever-coveted Best Director award too.
In his acceptance speech for the above, Bong thanked his fellow nominees Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Phillips, and Sam Mendes.
In true Mean Girls fashion, he said that he wished he could split the award and share it with all four of them – with a Texas chainsaw, nonetheless.
He also said that he was going to “drink until next morning,” which is absolutely fair enough.
Parasite isn’t just the first ever non-English speaking film to nab the leading award, it’s also one of the only few Best Picture winners of the past few years that has been actually a truly great film.
Funny, perceptive, and deeply upsetting, the movie has been picking up awards left, right, and centre ever since awards season began.
It should have made sense then that Parasite always going to clear up at the Oscars, but the surprise around the film’s domination at last night’s ceremony wasn’t because it was undeserved – but because it’s so unlike the Academy to pay tribute to a film like it.
Especially one that’s not English speaking.
The judgements of the Academy seem to hold less and less weight as the years go by, but its dominance in the industry and the post-ceremony chatter it generates early single February can’t be ignored.
For the past few years, most of the discussion around the awards has been negative.
It overlooks the work of female directors, it ignores people of colour, it has for some reason started awarding films that really aren’t that great at all with Best Picture awards.
And although all of the above may remain true – and next year will no doubt serve as a return to subpar movies being afforded the highest honour in Hollywood – at least this year, the Best Picture truly did win.
