With Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17 due out soon, I thought it was high time we took a No But Listen-shaped look at the iconic director’s back catalogue.
Starting with Barking Dogs Never Bite at the turn of the millennium, he broke through in 2003’s Memories of a Murder, a chronicling of a real-life serial killer case, and spent the next two decades or so making strange, disparate, and always compelling movies across various genres. From the razor-sharp monster-movie commentary on imperialism in The Host (2006) to 2013’s adaptation of the futuristic sci-fi novel Snowpiercer, to the Oscar-winning social drama Parasite, he’s one of the most consistently fascinating directors of the last century, and a prime candidate for our Directrospective (plug for the series). So, let’s take a look at his best and worst movies and what they say about his career!
Worst Film: Mother
Now, I want to make sure you understand that this “worst” comes with about the biggest disclaimer imaginable. Because there is no bad movie in Joon-Ho’s back catalogue – it really comes down to personal taste as to what tickles your neo-noir pickle. And it’s a testament to the sheer quality of his work that his worst movie (in my eyes) is Mother – an incredibly polished and compelling thriller with an outstanding performance by Kim Hye-Ja to hang it all on. Even here, Joon-Ho’s excellent grasp of genre-bending is on full display, moving between drama, fairytale, crime story, and tense family thriller somehow studded through with his trademark black humour.
Best Film: Parasite
Again, take your pick for his best – you could make an argument for almost any of his films as his best, and I could be convinced. The reason this is up there with his best for me is how much it feels like a coming-together of his previous work into a full, polished masterpiece – the realistic family dynamics from Host, the black comedy against the stark backdrop from Memories of a Murder, that sense of claustrophobia and containment in a very modern space from Snowpiercer, amongst so much more. Parasite is a distillation of everything he does well, crafted in this seethingly sharp weapon aimed at the class systems capitalism creates. Every genre it plays in, it does it better than almost any other movie you’ve seen in the last decade, and it feels like Joon-Ho is having fun behind the camera the whole time.
What do you think of Bong Joon-Ho as a director? What are his best and worst movies in your eyes, and why? Let us know in the comments below, and check out the rest of the directrospective series right here!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via The New Yorker)
No But Listen 