MIFF 2025: Parasite (Live in Concert)
Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 is ongoing and I went to watch my eleventh session (of 12!) , almost there.
This was a viewing of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, with live music from the film’s composer Jung Jae-il.
For context: I am a photographer/youtuber that wants to up my cinematography and storytelling, that’s why I’m watching 12 sessions at the film festival PLUS reviewing them here on my blog!
This was incredible. Parasite was my favourite film of all time, recently that spot was taken over by Homebound. Regardless, I was pretty hyped to see it again. I’ve been thinking of rewatching it, but I never did and what a way to finally do it. The soundtrack in Parasite is a banger. In particular, the music for the montage scene with the peaches, the live performance for that was lit.
This review is going to be a different, I’m going into it from the lens of: just watched 10 film festival sessions and now want to compare it with an Oscar winning film. So I’ll be comparing it other films that I watched during the festival. I’m also going to review the experience of the concert itself.
All images courtesy of the film
The Experience
The concert was Hamer Hall, part of Arts Centre Melbourne. I never actually been in there, I want to go more! We were actually a bit late and miss a bit at the start, apparently there was a speech. The musicians were amazing. It’s so immersive and immaculate that sometimes I forget that they were playing it live, in a good way. I’d just be watching the film and the music would come on, no biggie, then after a couple of seconds I realised, “oh yeah, it’s live music!” — I don’t know how else to explain it to make it sound better haha, but it was good. It was so cool to see Jung Jae-il playing different kinds of instruments — maybe it’s normal for a composer? haha, certainly looked cool to me.
Comparisons with other MIFF films
As mentioned, this was my favourite movie of all time. I loved the narrative, how it was told, how the compositions bring together the story, how the cinematography is done, how camera angles have implicit meaning. Dang, writing all that makes me think it is still my favourite movie. In comparison, most of MIFF films picked some of these aspects and honed in on those aspects. Of course these are films with different budgets, time, locations, and so on. And I’m not comparing them in the basis that they should be close or equal, more in terms of seeing what I think is the peak to the other really good (much better than I can do) films that is not there yet.
I don’t want to pick and choose specific films to compare, but that’s the general gist!