On what makes Parasite's mise-en-scène work as a visual argument that the script doesn't need to state.

Bong Joon-ho and production designer Lee Ha-jun designed the Park house and the Kim semi-basement to be in constant visual dialogue. Every time the film cuts between the two spaces it's making an argument: vertical space, light, and air are forms of class privilege that are so naturalized they have become invisible to the people who possess them.

The staircase in the Kim home goes down. The stairs in the Park house go up. This is not subtle. But the film earns the non-subtlety by embedding it in a visual system so comprehensive that you don't consciously process it. You feel the difference between the spaces before you analyze it.

The scene in the kitchen — the one involving a peach — is the film's fulcrum. It's the point at which the two worlds collide in a way that has physical consequences. Bong stages it at a specific visual height in relation to the kitchen counter that is meaningful if you've been paying attention to what the film has been doing with levels and sight lines.

Watching Parasite on second viewing is watching a director control your spatial awareness with extraordinary precision.