这部电影嘲讽精英阶层，背后金主却来自精英

由韩国导演奉俊昊执导的热门电影《寄生虫》（Parasite）是2019年韩国最热门的电影，已经入围奥斯卡最佳影片提名（拿下“最佳国际影片”奖项应该是十拿九稳）。该片在美国的票房有望达到2000万美元，对一部非英语电影来说比较出人意料。电影的内容多元化，既是滑稽剧，也有感情戏，还反映了韩国令人心碎的收入不平等加剧现象。简而言之，在这个贫富关系最紧张的时代，《寄生虫》在全世界范围都引发了共鸣。

更加值得注意的是，该片执行制片人李美敬是从三星剥离出来的CJ娱乐公司副董事长，也是三星创始人的孙女。换句话说，该电影背后最大的资助方是韩国最显赫家族的成员，她的堂兄是三星电子的实际掌门人李在镕，也是《寄生虫》中被妖魔化的社会精英典型。

对于CJ娱乐公司来说，支持《寄生虫》和奉俊昊并非首次。更加重要的是，李美敬对艺术家向来支持，特别是在韩国备受关注的本土演员。 “过去10年左右，李美敬一直在冒险投资有风险的创新型电影。”加州大学伯克利分校东亚研究部研究韩国电影的教授安振秀（音）说道，他举例称，朴赞郁的《小姐》（The Handmaiden）和金知云的《好家伙、坏家伙、怪家伙》（The Good, the Bad, the Weird）两部电影均由CJ娱乐公司发行。安振秀表示，尽管李美敬的背景是社会精英，但其领导的公司崇尚“自由和进步”，还称赞她是“韩国最具影响力也最强大的女性电影制片人”。（财富中文网）

本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志2020年1月刊。

译者：冯丰

审校：夏林

Parasite, the hit film from South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, was the most talked-about movie of 2019 in its home country, a serious candidate for a Best Picture nod at the Oscars (and a presumed shoo-in for Best Foreign Language Film), and is on track to gross $20 million in the U.S., a windfall for a non-English title. The film checks multiple boxes. It is a hilarious farce, a boy-meets-girl tale with a twist, and a heartbreaking send-up of income inequality in South Korea. In short, Parasite has struck a chord worldwide at a time of maximum rich-versus-poor tensions.

It is all the more noteworthy, then, that Miky Lee, the film’s executive producer, is vice chairman of CJ Entertainment and a granddaughter of the founder of Samsung, from which CJ was spun out. In other words, the film’s top financial backer is a member of the most prominent family in South Korea—her first cousin is Jay Y. Lee, the de facto head of Samsung Electronics—the epitome of the social elite that Parasite demonizes.

For CJ, backing Parasite and Bong, whom it has financed before, is business as usual. What’s more, Miky Lee has a track record of supporting artists, particularly Korean actors who have crossed powerful interests at home. “Miky Lee has taken a risk in investing in dicey and innovative films for the past decade or so,” says Jinsoo An, a professor in the University of California at Berkeley’s East Asian studies department who studies Korean cinema. He cites Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden and Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird, two films CJ distributed. Lee’s background notwithstanding, says An, her company is “liberal and progressive,” and she is “the most influential and powerful female film producer in South Korea.”

A version of this article appears in the January 2020 issue of Fortune.