Opinion | Oscars 2020: Parasite’s best picture win is stunning – and shatters the Academy Awards’ 92-year-old glass ceiling
- Bong Joon-ho’s film forced the Academy to recognise that no one culture has a monopoly on making great films
- In becoming the first foreign-language best picture Oscar winner, Parasite has accomplished something several other films could rightfully have done long ago
And yet, even within that elite company, Parasite stands in a history-making class by itself. Bong’s movie is not just the first Korean production but also the first non-English-language picture ever to win the Oscar for best picture. (He also became the first Korean filmmaker to win the Oscar for directing.) Parasite is the first movie to win best picture and the international feature award (formerly known as the foreign-language film award) in the same night.
It is the second winner of the Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, to take the best picture Oscar, and the first since Marty pulled off the same feat 64 years ago, thus forging – or renewing – a symbolic bond between the Hollywood establishment and the most venerated platform for international cinema.
Parasite has dealt a much-needed slap to the American film industry’s narcissism, its long-standing love affair with itself, its own product and its own image. It has startled the academy into recognising that no country’s cinema has a monopoly on greatness – no small thing at a time when trumped-up nationalism and xenophobia have a way of seeping into our art no less than our politics.
