Parasite won 4 Oscar awards under the categories Best Screenplay, Best Foreign Film, Best Director and Best Picture. And as the whole of world is in cheers for the South Korean film, fans of Tamil actor Vijay feel otherwise.
Movie-goers in Chennai were stunned to notice, while watching Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar winning film Parasite, that it shared striking similarities to Vijay's 1999 Tamil film.
The film Minsara Kanna, directed by KS Ravikumar and starring Vijay and Monica Castelino is revolved around a young man, Kannan (Vijay), who falls in love with Ishwariya (Monica Castelino), of an overprotective millionaire.
After being in love, he decides to pose as a bodyguard and is employed by her millionaire sister. His brother and sister are also roped in to keep an eye on the family and help further their brother’s agenda, and are hired as a servant and cook respectively.
Parasite shares the same theme of 'infiltration' by proxy.
In the Korean film, a poor family of four con a rich, upper-class family into hiring them: the son is hired as a tutor, the sister as an art therapist, the father as a driver, and the mother as a housekeeper.
While in Minsara Kanna, Kanan and Ishwarya are both from rich families — are ultimately united in love. But in Parasite, the story reveals the deep class divides that plague society in the age of capitalism.
