The Host Analysis

The Host (2006)

Directed by: Bong Joon-ho

Available on Netflix

Starring: Song Kang-ho, a frequent collaborator with Bong Joon-ho

The French film magazine Cahiers du cinema ranked the film as 3rd place in its list of best films of the year 2006 and 4th for the 2000-2009 decade.

It is a monster film, the film goes about a monster which kidnaps a man's daughter and his attempts to rescue her. I now understand the power of a collaboration between an actor and a director after having watched some of the Scorsese-De Niro films and now the Bong Joon-ho and Song Kang-ho films. This worked well because in the three films that I watched of this combination, The Host, Memories of Murder and Parasite, I could clearly see the difference in the physicality of the three characters; in terms of body language. The Host has a lot of black comedy, and Bong uses it cleverly; there is a scene where the father of the protagonist, tells someone about how as a kid his son struggled a lot for food and how he was a bad father. That's a brilliant scene, here we understand the relationship between the father and the son and we also empathize with the protagonist, when we know that he has been through a lot. But, what Bong does next will blow your mind. He cuts to the people listening and they are dozing; this works as a joke and also as a back up where if the previous scene wouldn't be entertaining enough then this joke can be a pay off with the backstory being the setup for a joke. Bong gives this joke as an incentive for the audience while giving exposition/the backstory, which film makers have to do but most of them end up doing it in a boring way.

I love the ending of this film, and these kind of endings where an important character to the protagonist dies in the film but that character and the justice to that character is survived by the loved ones of the character. It makes the endings not tragic and yet make our hearts heavy and satisfied. In the novel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; Amir wrongs Hassan and he dies without getting or seeing proper justice; this could be a heart wrenching tragedy if Amir doesn't save and adopt Hassan's son Sohrab and redeems himself. Similarly, in The Host, the daughter of the protagonist is killed by the creature and she is survived by the boy she saves dying as her father adopts him. This ending is a way more emotionally satisfying ending than the father saving his daughter and they being happy together ever after. The protagonist, Park Gang-du, is a clumsy guy throughout the film and he is the source of most of the black comedy in the film. However, he becomes a better person at the end when we see he serving food for him and his son, instead of giving alcohol as he gives to his daughter. Also, a brilliant and a simple visual way of showing that he is not that messy guy anymore, is the color of his hair which is yellow throughout the film; at the end it is black.

The editing of this film played a major role in holding tension, whenever the monster is introduced in a scene it is introduced after a shot of the reaction of someone in the crowd, this creates anticipation and this subconsciously increases the power of antagonism in the film. Bong uses rain as a tool to enhance drama, I can recall watching a rain sequence in almost every film of his. The CGI of the monster is done decently, I was in the story throughout and never felt an itch in the CGI except the last burning shot of the monster; somehow people struggle a lot with creating fire shots using CGI. I could sense an underlying political commentary throughout, at a scene the father of the protagonist says, 'What else do we do other than what the government asks us to?' and there were also other anti-American themes as I read about them, to the extent that North Korea lauded the film. This film was one of the highest grossing films of South Korea, and this film has all the qualities for everyone from a cave man to a philosophy major to watch, enjoy and to draw from.