Thank Fathom it’s Friday

Korea in the melting pot

Erik Britton17 July 2026|

The best scene in the award-winning South Korean film Parasite sees rainwater washing the expensive houses high on the hill before sluicing down through ever-lower levels of the city, collecting detritus all the way. Finally it reaches a filthy, toxic sump in the basement where the family at the centre of the action live. If that image feels familiar, that’s because it is. It featured in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, in Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and, in a different way, Our Mutual Friend, among others. Like Parasite,