‘Parasite,’ ‘Hustlers,’ ‘Knives Out,’ and class warfare in 2019 films

Deep into Hustlers, Jennifer Lopez’s Ramona spells out a familiar theme. 

“The game is rigged,” she declares, “and it does not reward people who play by the rules.”

Ramona is in the middle of justifying her own highly illegal hustle, which involves drugging strip club customers and running up their credit cards, which is to say she’s hardly got a claim on the moral high ground here. But by this point in the film, it’s hard not to relate to her righteous indignation.

After all, it wasn’t Ramona who created the class system she lives in, or caused the recession she’s suffered through, or allowed those responsible to get away scot-free. She’s simply figured out the best way to win this game is to play by the real rules, the ones the guys in power live by, not the ones they tell everyone else to follow. 

These films tell a story that’s more complicated than rich versus poor.

Ramona’s not the only character to have that awakening this fall. Elsewhere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Parasite balanced comedy, tragedy, and white-hot fury for a story of two families at opposite ends of the economic spectrum, while Knives Out turned its spiky wit against a clan of rich ne’er-do-wells. 

Collectively, these films tell a story that’s more complicated than rich versus poor. In their telling, the problem is not a single predatory individual, but a system that sorts people into rich and poor in the first place. 

In Parasite, the impoverished Kim family ingratiates themselves into the employ of the well-to-do Park family in present-day South Korea. Even as the clans become intertwined, however, social and economic class remain an unbridgeable gap between them. 

It’s not simply a matter of one family having nicer clothes or a bigger house, though of course they do. Class infects every single aspect of their respective existences, so that even something as fundamental as water becomes an entirely different experience. In one of the most pointed jabs of the film, we cut between a poor neighborhood flooded with sewage to a rich family watching the rain outside as they reach into a fridge stocked with Voss water. The poor at the mercy of the elements, while the rich get to corral them with glass and stainless steel.

The tragedy of Parasite is that its characters are all too human, behaving in believably human ways.

But Parasite, despite its title, is not a movie about monsters. The tragedy is that its characters are all too human, behaving in believably human ways (albeit in heightened scenarios). But money or the lack of it has shaped them in ways big and small. Generosity and naiveté are luxuries of the rich, cunning and selfishness are the tools of the poor, and an inability to empathize with others is the unavoidable consequence of a capitalist system in which the only way to get to the top is by stepping on everyone else. 

The characters of Hustlers could probably relate. Set around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, the film draws a clear line between the greedy bankers who broke the law and preyed on innocents to fill their own coffers, and the strippers who are doing the same to them. The male club patrons see these women as lust objects, while the strippers see their clients as marks. It’s not personal. It’s just business. 

What writer-director Lorene Scafaria understands, though, is that the two groups are not on even playing ground. At one point, Destiny (Constance Wu), Ramona’s partner-in-crime, asks a journalist (Julia Stiles) who grew up “comfortable” what she’d do for a thousand dollars. It’s a rhetorical question, but a telling one reminding us how the value of a dollar can change depending on where you are on the ladder. 

A thousand dollars to Destiny and Ramona represents independence, security, the promise of a better life for themselves and their loved ones. A thousand dollars to the clients they’re bilking is a drop in the bucket, an amount so trivial they can afford to chalk it up as a fun mistake. Hustlers neither condones nor condemns Ramona and Destiny’s behavior, but frames it as a reflection of the system we’re all trapped in. 

Knives Out, on the other hand, wonders whether it’s possible to exit the rat race altogether. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, the modern-day mystery turns on the question of who killed millionaire patriarch Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), and why. It’s a story that comes at class difference from the other side of the equation. Instead of asking what a person without money might do to get some, Knives Out explores what people who already have money will do to hold onto it.

Most of the characters (and most of the suspects) are members of Harlan’s own family. Their lives have been defined by their access to his money, even when they themselves don’t seem to realize it. They build businesses “from the ground up” by taking out million-dollar loans from him, or preach liberal values learned at expensive colleges that he’s paid for. 

They are a self-satisfied lot, but their smugness doesn’t hold scrutiny when viewed from the perspective of some of the outside characters, like Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s nurse, or Blanc (Daniel Craig), the PI on the case. Through them, we see how money has warped these people and their relationships, how it’s rendered them petty and pathetic, and we come to wonder if there might be a better way. 

If that take on the comfortably rich sounds familiar, that may be because it echoes other recent tales like this summer’s Ready or Not or HBO’s Succession and Righteous Gemstones. It’s not just the ultra-rich coming under fire, either — Hustlers and Parasite share more than a little common ground with recent films like Us, High Flying Bird, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco. 

As different as these narratives are, all share an emphasis on the inhumanity of a zero-sum game that requires prosperity to come at the expense of others, and reduces the losers to pawns or tools or mere inconveniences. The rich are often the villains, yes, and several of these stories find tremendous fun in taking them down. But these storytellers have their eyes on a bigger prize. 

The unofficial “class warfare” theme of TIFF may not have emerged by design, but it’d be too flippant to call it a coincidence. It’s part of a piece with a larger conversation happening right now, playing out in everything from politics to pop culture. Ramona is right: The game is rigged. And by pointing that out in no uncertain terms, these films are making the first steps toward setting it right.