Do The Right Thing

Did I do the right thing by watching Do The Right Thing? I don't recall ever hearing about this film until the day I watched it. You can tell I didn't watch this film exactly voluntarily, like the last one, but that's okay. Well, I don't have to have heard about every film, I guess. Sometimes it is good to watch things that weren't seemingly interesting to you at first. Same goes for books. If you leave me alone, I would read only the books I'm interested in, which sounds like a natural thing to do. However, being in a book club gives me an opportunity to give certain other books a chance and I do end up liking some of them even though they may not be the literary genre I prefer. All that is to say, I am glad I am seeing different types of films now---although that doesn't imply I necessarily will like them.  

The next question is, am I doing the right thing by writing this review post? Who knows? I guess we will never know. I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to write about it but as the days went I realized I do have things to say about this film. So here we are. 

Before I start, let us record that this film was released in 1989. I do not know when, but at some point in the past, they switched from showing actor/director names at the beginning of the film to showing them at the end (although there may be exceptions). I believe they did the right thing. At the beginning of this film, there was a song (whose lines were practically slogans) playing and there was a girl dancing while the whole film crew's names were being written on the screen, one by one. Now, this song was about four and a half minutes, and the dance was not interesting to me either. I didn't care much about the names at that point because, well, I live in 2023 and I can look these things up after the movie anyways. So that was pretty boring, but don't let that discourage you. If you can survive the first 5 minutes of the movie, err film, you will see non-boring parts too. I guess the most interesting thing about the dancing girl, to me, was the clothing---I don't think I miss the fashion trends of late 1980s and/or early 1990s. If you wanted to have some nostalgia though, you can put this film on, I am sure it will help you. 

Normally, I try to evaluate the shows I watch according to the year they are made. This is sort of easier when the show is really really old, like 1940s or 1960s. But when it's somewhat closer to current time it is harder because, first of all, there are clear differences how the show (or film) would be shot in years like 1940s, and second, there are more clear differences in how things looked like in real life in very old days. For example, 24 is one of my favourite tv series. I have seen it when it was being aired. If you had tried to watch it in, say 2018 (I am not even saying 2023), you'd have to shush your inner critique about certain things if you really wanted to enjoy it. Same goes for Doctor Who. Not the first one from the 1960s, but the one that started in 2005. It's really hard for me to like the seasons from 2005-2006 when I watch them now, even though I had liked them in the first place. But if I go back and watch the episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, I don't even start to criticize things that are due to its year---they don't bother me. Now, 1989. This is really tricky, it's not 2000s and it's definitely not 60s. The film definitely depicts those last bits of the culture of the 80s. So I guess I just am not a fan of that culture, although interestingly enough, when it comes to rock music, I really like 70s and 80s---in fact, those are still what I listen to daily. Okay, nobody said I had to be consistent with myself, so I believe all is good.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I didn't know about this movie until I watched it, but I did have two pieces of information about it: that it involves Brooklyn streets and that the film tried to give the audience a feeling of hot weather. When I hear Brooklyn, the first thing that comes to my mind is Captain America. Well, he was an Iced Cap during the 80s, so he has nothing to do with this movie. The second thing that came to my mind was my own promenade in Brooklyn. It was just a walk but the neighbourhood was really nice. So it was nice to see those streets again, in the film, although they looked a bit different---when I visited Brooklyn it was not the 80s. If you know about the typical architectural style of Brooklyn homes (at least from tv shows), you know that there are usually a short flight of stairs to the entrance of the houses. When I visited Brooklyn, nobody was sitting on those, so it was nice to see in the film that they were used. I guess it is nice to hang out on the stairs and it is not a problem unless it's someone else's house. In fact, when I was younger, I would hang out on such stairs (not in Brooklyn---this type of entrance exists in other places on earth as well) but I never knew the owners of these buildings that I sat at the entrance of. So I was often shooed. In fact, one time someone---instead of saying something---emptied a bucket of (dirty) water on me. I can't say it was a pleasant experience. So yes, as the film rolled and events of the film started, these were what I was thinking of. 

The second piece of information I had: the film tried to give the audience a feeling of hot weather. They made it look like, in the film, it was one of the hottest summers in the history of NYC. I wondered if there was such a thing in the years immediately previous to the year the film was made, and strangely, there wasn't. Well, there is 1983 but it is not that close to 1989, although it could have still been an inspiration to Spike Lee (who is the person who made the film). Now, how was hot weather depicted? Everyone was covered in beads of sweat---this is not that hard nor is it creative. The characters mentioned it in their lines how hot it was, which is again not that special. There was an ice cube scene but one could do that without the hot weather too. In fact, the ice cube scene reminded of one of my memories and it was outdoors in the winter, although I must admit there was a hot tub involved, it was still technically cold outside, so this ice cube business did not even make me think of hot weather---too bad. So somehow I wasn't impressed by the several signals of hot temperatures during the movie (nor shortly after). Only a bit more later I realized that I was indeed affected by the characters' suffering that being in the hot brings. How being in hot weather for long periods of time would affect a person('s thinking, decision-making, and feelings) was carefully and successfully weaved into the scenario itself and that was also spectacularly performed by the actors/actresses. 

How was it in the scenario/story? I don't mean the obvious lines stating the weather. The physical fever brought up by the hot temperatures is transformed into a fever that was the nervous excitement of the people, and in return, contributed to the violent events at the end of the film. At least that's how I see it. I am not saying the whole fight started just because it was hot, but one cannot deny that having to bear very high temperatures all day (and on consecutive days) can make a person more impatient than usual and hence the person might have a heightened level of anger at rest.

Continuing with the temperature, they mention in the film that it is about 100 F. Well, that didn't really mean much to me, unfortunately. That's because they didn't write how many Celsius that is, but also I am sort of more tolerant to hot temperatures than others. I guess I am also used to seeing sweating and/or sweaty men (not saying I enjoy it but they exist and I see them), so it wasn't awkward to me at all during the film when they showed these sweaty/sweating men. Now, it was quite funny, though, that these men were still wearing a sleeveless tops underneath their (short sleeve) shirts and still wearing long pants, and socks! I mean, why? If it's that hot, why don't you try de-layering? So I found that funny. The picture I just described is from the scenes where there are a few men sitting in front of a bright red wall under a not-very-large umbrella, which was also a bit funny---they insistently spent time there instead of finding somewhere with an actual shade. 

Although I had been claiming the hot weather in the film didn't affect me as much, I did feel relief too when the characters had a relief from the hot by opening the fire hydrant. It is such a freeing experience to be washed down on the street, unless it is done to you by the police like here or by a police vehicle with water cannons. So the relief sensation I was thinking of was like the following. It's summer (and potentially 37 degrees C), you are watering your backyard with a hose (or cleaning the floors of the front yard), you make a salvo and before you turn off the water, you water your feet and that gives you a little nice break from the hot. This is probably one of my happiest memories from childhood---playing with water as a child was always fun. Of course, that required the parents let you play with water, although it is possible to do it secretly as well and feel the illusion of freedom.

The fire hydrant scene definitely made me think of the notion of freedom. Freedom, or more precisely, the United States being a country of freedom (or not), was mentioned in the movie at least a couple of times. It was a nice touch and aligns well with the film's statement. I always like it if someone questions the status of the US being the land of freedom---because that's what the US would like to advertise itself as (to the rest of the world) but to me it's just a grand charade. There is a lot I can say about this but I will stick to the film's review. I think the film depicts freedom (being an illusion) in a quite well manner. It is true, though, one has more freedom in the US compared to Canada in at least one context: drinking on the streets. As I live in Canada, during the scenes where they were drinking on the street, I truly envied them and asked myself: could the United States of America be really the country of freedom?

Although the name of the film is Do The Right Thing, for the most part of the film, people just kept not doing the right thing. Especially toward the end of it, first Radio Raheem doesn't do the right thing, then the Italian-American Sal doesn't do the right thing, then the police doesn't do the right thing, and it goes on like that. At the very end though, I think the main character did the right thing by staying friends with Sal. The main character was called Mookie. I guess the biggest catch for me about this film was that I had no idea Mookie was Spike Lee. Well, he was very young in the film and I am already bad with faces, what can I say? 

Spike Lee is the director, producer and the writer of this film. Now, I think that as a director Spike Lee is not so different than Nolan when it comes to the representation of women. Overall, the women were not represented well in this film. It is just happening in the men's world, and the women were there either just to be pretty or to be an object of sex. In fact, the woman who played in the nude scene apparently was crying while filming that (the scenes actually doesn't show her face so you can't tell she was crying). That's horrible, I don't know why they kept filming while she was crying. I don't think they did the right thing.

The thing I liked the most about this film was Samuel L. Jackson. As it turns out, he had not yet had his breakthrough in his career when this film was made. I do believe that Spike Lee did the right thing by casting Samuel L. Jackson. At about the 50-min mark of the film (that's almost halfway through), he (Samuel Jackson's character) started yelling "Time out!". He said it multiple times and very loud. If I were in control, I would have probably paused the film for a time-out following his command. I don't know if you know, gentle reader, some cinemas have an intermission at about a halfway mark of the films they show. Now, if this film was shown in such a place, and the intermission started right after Samuel Jackson yelled "Time out! Time out!", that would have been really funny. Oh well. 

I give 7/10.

Fun fact: it turns out that the director was so obsessed with showing the heat that he put a heat bar in front of the camera to make it look more real. So those beads of sweat were actually real sweat in at least some of the scenes.

Parasite

 I had heard about this movie when it was very popular at the time because, well, everybody was talking about it. However, I don't really like watching shows or movies at their peak times---I guess when something is too common it gives me the feeling that it is mundane and I'd like to do things that are not mundane. Now, I did see Oppenheimer when it was too popular, but I guess there can be exceptions. Parasite won lots of awards, which sounds like a good thing, but this kind of thing is usually not necessarily enough for me to go and watch a movie. So, how did I end up watching this movie? As it turns out, due to a coincidence and some luck, I am entering a new phase in my relationship with movies as I started sitting in an introduction to film studies class at the university I work. So I watched this movie, not exactly by choice, but because it was put on screen in front of me. But I did choose to stay there---I thought it was a good time to watch this movie, so I did. If it wasn't put in front of me, I think I wouldn't put it on myself to watch it in a foreseeable future.

I don't usually watch Korean cinema. Not that I am against it, but I just happen to not prefer it. This might sound a bit racist---I don't think it is---but I seem to like languages which use the Latin alphabet more than the other languages. It is similar to finding blond guys more attractive than brunets (not that I am attracted to blond men---it is just an example) or liking scuba-diving more than paragliding (not that I scuba-dived ever in my life---it is just an example). Well, I guess these are not exactly very good examples but my point is it is about what one likes. Now, although one can watch a film with subtitles, the language is still a barrier, in my opinion. When you have absolutely no idea about the language, it still builds a barrier. Of course, it is still somewhat possible to perceive emotions even if you don't know the language. However, I still think one cannot capture everything wholly even with the subtitles. I feel that I have some understanding of many languages whose alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet even if I don't entirely speak that language. I must add here that I do (more or less) speak 4 languages and have at least studied additional 2 for some time, all are based on the Latin alphabet. You can see that it was my liking toward these languages that made me study them. So, languages like Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Chinese simply don't interest me as much (no offence to anyone) and as a result I am exposed to them less than I am to languages like Spanish, French, German or Norwegian. Being not exposed to a certain language, I naturally have less ideas about it. Okay, what do I mean by "having ideas about a language"? Even if you don't know the words, you can still know small things like how an agreement "nod" would be like in a language, or how a disagreement "tsk" can manifest itself---believe it or not, these things change from language to language. Additionally, Korean words sometimes sound like gibberish in my native language (again, no offence, it is just how the sounds are, nothing can be done). So, all of this pushes me away from Korean cinema. I did see an episode or two of some Korean drama(s) (that are tv series) due to a friend. So I am guessing that if I keep watching, I will get used to hearing the language. 

Continuing with the subtitles, although I watched Parasite with subtitles, there were scenes in which there was a product with a label, and there was no subtitles for those labels. For example, I wondered what was written on the pizza box. Perhaps it was not important to the story, but still it was in the mise-en-scene so I would have liked to know. More important than the pizza boxes, there were alcohol bottles and I was really curious about what they were---were they white wine bottles, rice wine or soju? Again, maybe they are not so important to the storyline but they were there, in the scene! I wanted to know. I guess because I don't know much about Korean culture, I really cared about learning about it through one single film---which is a bit too greedy. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the English CC subtitles would have these details. Perhaps I should have watched the movie with CC and not regular English subtitles, although they don't seem to have that subtitle option for this film on Netflix. I guess the English CC option exists only if the movie is already in English.

Before continuing on, I want to go over the pizza boxes again. There was a scene where pest control was applying extermination on the street while they were folding pizza boxes at home. They kept the windows open to get free service---well, I understand that and it is so sad and funny at the same time, a good touch there to how a poor person's mind might work, all good. But, all I could think of was those boxes were also exposed to the gas and still were sent to the pizza company for use. I mean, this is insane. Honestly, when the pizza worker showed up at their door the next day, I expected the issue to be about this but it was about some not well-folded batch. So, that was a disappointment for me. One might argue it is safe, but when I had to get a treatment in my apartment, they always asked me to clear counters and stuff. So I am pretty sure this chemical shouldn't go into our food. Maybe the point is that these people are poor enough not to care about this. 

Some things in the story were quite unclear to me. It is possible that they are unclear because I missed something, but I think I didn't. Not that I am blaming the story-telling quality of the film, but for example, I didn't get from where this college guy was a friend of the son (Kevin). Apparently, the son didn't go to college. They seemed to have referred to the friend as the college friend. Were they just friends in the neighbourhood and one guy got into college? I suppose I will just assume that and perhaps this unclarity is a product of the language barrier. In any case, not getting everything usually happens to me---I guess I just can't say "understood" if I didn't really understand something 100%.

One of the first things I noticed in this film (yes, I guess I am going to start saying 'film' now, instead of 'movie', since I am now sitting in a film studies class, and I should be classy), is the suspension. The suspension they (the film makers, not sure which one exactly) use to try to build tension. I am guessing that this is pretty tricky. If you wait too long, you might lose the audience. What is the correct amount of seconds? I guess this is where the director's talent lies. I think that the very first scene was a bit long that it made me think "should I fear the next scene?". I guess it went a bit long because they were writing the names (of the actors?) too but knowing a few things about the movie, I didn't know where the horror would begin, so I started suspecting perhaps a bit early. I also think that the very first scene (the window view from the family's semi-basement flat) being shown for quite a bit of time at the beginning was intentional. It signifies that this picture has an importance to the story. Indeed, the director goes back to the same picture at the end. More about this later. Back to suspension. There were many scenes in which the audience was left in a suspense (by not showing the next scene). This sometimes created intensity for me but also sometimes made me a bit more curious. Now, do I like the suspense? Maybe I like it when it is done well. This reminds me of the movie Drive where there is SO MUCH suspense (in my opinion) but I didn't get bored or distracted, so I think it was done quite well. Hopefully I will write about Drive one day---at least I intend to. 

Poorness. The poor point of view was often an agent of comedy in this movie. Sorry, film. I am not sure if I like this (even though I might have laughed). The comedy was good but the fact that they are poor, by itself, is not so good. Well, I guess one can call this dark humour and then we are all good. Then, at some point, the perspective of poor people and what being poor made them do is not an instrument of comedy anymore but of horror, which was quite unsettling. I should add that the personality treats of rich people are quite well-portrayed in the film---or at least the treats that we, the middle-class, think the rich people have. I know that the global reception of this film was huge---it grossed millions and millions. But I wonder how the real poor people perceived it---I presume they probably didn't have the money to go see it. Of course, it is still possible to be transparent and laugh at one's own embarrassments. It is not necessarily a bad thing. But perhaps not so many people are so transparent, or maybe they don't quite get it as them being made fun of, so they laugh. I remember quite vividly, for example, a time when I was desperate for free Wi-Fi. I wasn't necessarily poor but I was a student in France and there was a problem with the bank, so I didn't have any money and so I couldn't buy a plan. Anyways, so this free Wi-Fi quest was not so funny to me, I only empathized with them. Actually, a lot of "poor people life" elements were familiar to me, now that I think about it. I guess I know more poor people than I realize (or I am poorer than I realize). I definitely know more number of poor people than the rich ones. Oh well. 

If the poorness jokes weren't so funny for me, then what was? Perhaps I am more attracted to the "jokes" that are not told, but perhaps shown. This is extremely personal and I am not claiming that "this is the way". I found the elevated toilet funny. I have no idea if it is a common thing in Korean homes, or Korean basement homes. It is not clear to me why the toilet had to be on an elevated surface in the bathroom. It looked cool, though. I also liked they labelled the cell phone which had "The Care" number's SIM card in it. It was also nice when the daughter scolded her mother just as a part of an act (but it was really only the kid there so it was probably quite unnecessary, which is probably why I found it funny). Some of these funny moments come from the scenario and maybe the art director. In any case, kudos to the film crew. 

I will continue with the director. He clearly did a very good job---he won an Academy award for Best Director for it. So who am I to judge. Not judging, but I will just comment on some stuff. I have already covered "the suspense" and mentioned "the beginning and the end". I will elaborate on the latter. Having the same picture (basement window view) at the start of the film and again at the end gives me the message "we are back where we started". This is actually exactly what happened. All that adventure, thrill, planning, carnage, and then, they are back at where they were (and still poor). From what I read online, it looks like this was what the director intended as well. That they are still living at the basement flat (and the son probably is not going to end up buying that house). In fact, I was so surprised when they started showing scenes where the son was buying the house---in these scenes they had brought their own furniture from the basement flat to the new house which doesn't make sense. Next, I want to tackle a particular shot. I guess it is safe to say that the conversations of the driver with his boss in the car were crucial to the story. Not always, but perhaps in a car scene in the second half of the movie, the director elected to show the driver from exactly where the boss would be sitting. I really wonder what the purpose of this was. My guess is that it might be because now that the turn of the events were about to change very soon and we might have all been empathizing with the poor family too much, the director wanted to separate us from them and tried to put us in a position or perspective of the home owners without us realizing it. 

Another method/trick the director pulled was with the montage of the collapse of the two poor families. I must add here that the introduction of a new poor family was unexpected so it felt almost like a plot twist to see another insane poor family in the story. After they fought each other and then seized for the night, both families were in defeat in their own ways. Showing a bit of this and a bit of that and trying to have a simultaneous defeat scene by scene looked good, although one cannot say it was a very creative cut. I must also add before proceeding that the night these two families had a fight, it was clear/expected that the boss was going to come home early, so no surprises there, and it felt like a cliché (because it practically was one). I guess a film is allowed to have a cliché or two and still win Palme d'Or as long as there are other interesting elements in it. After the flood, there was a scene, shot completely from a bird's eye view, in which the main poor family had put some of their stuff on a door (or a mattress?) which was floating in the water as they were going to the shelter. This scene immediately reminded me of Titanic's door scene and I thought "Wow, look at how many things they fit in there and Rose couldn't fit one Jack". 

I haven't really touched on the acting. It is partially because I do not know these actors and actresses at all and partially because of the language barrier that I feel. One thing that I liked was in the father (Mr. Kim)'s acting. I do not know if it was in the script or if the director told him to do that or if he decided on it on his own. There were a couple of scenes where the father covered his eyes with one arm. I took it as a manifestation of embarrassment or shame through body language but, of course, I am not sure. I still think that it was a big gesture to include and I liked it.

It is also worth to mention a significant motif in the film, the smell of the poor. I don't even like saying this, it sounds quite offensive. However, in the film, they had decided to make this a theme. Every now and then, they mentioned something about the smell of the main poor family (I say "main" because there is a side one as well, introduced later in the film). Now,  I have a very sensitive nose and I cannot possibly endure bad smells. I actually can't stand some good smells either---I have allergies. Having a sensitive nose could serve well if I had lived a few thousand years ago, I reckon. But nowadays, it is only a problem. If you read my Dune review, maybe you know that I get a bit too carried away sometimes when watching a film (mirror neurons problem)---I hold my breath if the air in the scene is not breathable. However, I was mostly okay during this film about the bad smell scenes. I guess those scenes weren't so focused on smelling itself, so I was fine. The smell of the poor (or the basement smell) theme was cleverly paved throughout the story and at the end it was what cracked the father---he couldn't take the insult anymore and he stabbed his boss (I guess that was a spoiler there). Well, what can I say, I really like it when the scenario serves its purpose (in this case, the smell not being mentioned for nothing). Although there was one thing I didn't like: the little boy of the rich house read the message in Morse code sent by the non-main poor family's man and he did absolutely nothing about it. What was the purpose of showing that scene, then? 

Dogs. I cannot pass without talking about the dogs. From the first moment I saw a dog in this film, I started wondering "what will this dog add to the story?" and it did indeed come up a couple of times but I think the story would have managed without it too. There is also the fact that a stereotypical rich family like that would have dogs (and maybe that's why the family has three and not only one) and maybe that's why they were there. Now, it is possible that these dogs represented something even deeper which I couldn't see, but oh well. They were cute anyways so it was nice to see them. 

I think the sounds of this film were pretty good, overall. The film won very many awards but as far as I know it didn't win the best soundtrack award. The one piece with piano was cleverly composed. It conveyed cheerful and scary feelings simultaneously---at least that's how it felt to me. This is adequately apt since it conforms the genre of the film being both dark comedy and horror. I can say that this is a great film but I am not sure if I would give this film a Palme d'Or, so it is probably a good thing I am not on a jury at Cannes Film Festival. I believe the Film Festival folks really care about if the film touches on any social problems, or what one can identify as the "real" problems in life. (Not that I don't care about social problems, it is just not necessarily something I look for in the films I see. Okay, maybe I do look for them too, but not as much.) Besides, I am not sure it is safe to regard the Cannes Film Festival, or its juries, politically unbiased completely. 

The title of the movie: Parasite. I believe they must have shown on the screen the title when the film started rolling, but somehow I don't remember seeing it. During the movie, the word itself doesn't really come up explicitly either---it's not like Oppenheimer where even whenever the guy was addressed the title had happened to come up. So, towards the end of the film, I just remembered: this film is called Parasite. Immediately after it made sense, of course. It's an interesting choice to call it Parasite. I guess this is one of the points this film makes a difference at---one does not usually use the word "parasite" in such a context.

Before I end this post, I will revisit my last post. In my last post, which was on Oppenheimer, I had complained about the stubbornness of Nolan about (not) using CGI and how unfair that was (due to environmental reasons). Now, in Parasite, the second floor of the rich family's house is completely CGI. Have we noticed? No. Did it matter? No. Apparently, a movie can use CGI and still be great. How extraordinary(!).

Now I am about to give this movie a score out of 10. Considering the fact that it won so many awards increases my expectations and interferes my decision-making process. If I didn't know about the awards, I would probably be giving another number. 

I give 8/10.

Fun fact(s): It looks like what they called ram-don in the film actually did not exist in real life. After the film's debut, people started posting videos on how to make ram-dons, and then, there was actually a company which started producing and selling ram-dons due to its popularity. This reminds me the Hogwarts Express announcement in London at 11 o'clock of every September 1st. Similarly, due to the influence of the Lord of the Ring film series, Auckland airport in NZ has a LOTR themed décor. Moreover, Air New Zealand made a special feature safety video in 2014 to celebrate The Hobbit series. The fun facts end here (for now).