Okja: Review

Bong Joon Ho is one of the best directors working today. For many budding filmmakers like myself he represents a shining beacon of change in the film industry. An advocate of strong storytelling, bold choices, political themes and introducing foreign film to the mainstream British/American audiences that have criminally underappreciated them in the past.

Like many, Parasite was an eye-opener for me that made me realise what I was missing out on by limiting my view to English language films. Watching foreign films allows you to experience something different from a different perspective.

As I've stated before on this blog, what films resonate with people at a time and a place can tell us a lot of sociological information about the audiences watching them.

Bearing that in mind, let's look at Bong Joon Ho's Okja, a Korean and American co-production that might just change the way you look at food forever.

1. Plot

Set in the not too distant future, a business woman called Lucy Mirando comes up with the definitive solution to world hunger. A breed of "Superpig" supposedly found in Brazil which can be bred to enormous sizes.

As a publicity stunt for her new product, Lucy sends super-piglets to farmers all over the world, who over ten years must compete to raise the biggest and best superpig.

One of the piglets is given to a Korean farmer and his daughter Mija, who over the ten years forms an unbreakable bond with the superpig who she names Okja. However, Okja is raised a little too well and she is selected as the winner of the superpig competition and brought to New York for the revolutionary product launch.

Terrified for what will happen to her friend Mija chases after Okja across Seoul and New York with the desire to set her free and bring her back to Korea. In the mist of the action is the Animal Liberation Front who suspect malpractice from the Mirando corporation and want to use Okja as a hidden camera to see what really goes on in the secretive superpig factory.

Okja is a hard film to attribute a genre to. Dark satire is probably the snuggest fit for it but amongst that there are elements of drama, absurdist comedy and even horror as the film delves into darker and more disturbing territory with some intensely upsetting scenes.

Because of this, at times it's very hard to know where you're at with Okja. The superb, grounded performances of Ahn Seo-hyun and Paul Dano contrasted with the crazed, over the top theatrics of Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal made me think the actors didn't really know where they were tonaly either.

Maybe it was Bong's intention to make the American characters larger and cruller than life but unfortunately for me this satirical take on American capitalism only hit the mark 50% of the time and felt false and cartoonish the rest of the time.

2. Satire and Politics

For me the most effective element of this film were any scenes involving the Animal Liberation Front. All the characters in this rag-tag group of "not terrorists" play the part completely straight which makes the satire work. These characters are essentially our heros but they are flawed and nieve. Paul Dano as Jay is the standout performance of the film for me.

Okja isn't exactly subtle with its themes and messaging. With it's clownish portrayal of capitalist big wigs and unflinching depiction of mass meat production, the ALF characters at least provide some grey area to the argument. We want them to succeed but they are not presented as anything other than human.

Although it would have made a different film, I wish Tilda Swinton's character had delivered more in this grey area. There were times when it felt like there was a more interesting character trying to get out.

There is a horrible but understandable argument that these animals are needed to feed the planet and despite the cruelty of their methods, are needed to save lives in famine stricken countries. Apart from being mentioned at the beginning, this argument never crops up again instead presenting Lucy Mirando as a monster who cares about nothing except out-doing her sister. Her sister is treated even more one-dimensionally as a money grabbing narcissist.

While I personally agree with a lot of the films messages there are times when it feels heavy handed, especially in the third act where the cruelty is pushed to extremes and there is an undisputable use of holocaust related imagery. A lot is based of the true process used to farm processed meat but the absence of grey area makes a lot of the cruelty feel unmotivated. There to shock the audience instead of an active decision by the characters.

The intelligence of the creatures themselves also makes everything feel worse. We are shown in the first scene that these creatures are much more intelligent than other livestock but this is never brought up, not even by the ALF.

3. Distribution and cross-cultural messaging

When Okja first premiered at Cannes it was booed at the very beginning before the film had even started. The reason? Because Okja is a Netflix original.

I can understand the hostility of other studios towards Netflix but like them or not, they have produced some brilliant films and the way Netflix works allows the commissioning of stranger and more challenging film projects that wouldn't get the budget or the platform without them.

Netflix works on a kind of pre-funding basis. A project is commissioned. Everyone on that film is paid an agreed rate and an agreed budget is put into the film. The success of the film doesn't have any effect on the platform itself as subscribers are paying for access to all content nor does it put pressure on the filmmaker to make something that will bring the studio money because the subscriber base is already there. This can lead to the commissioning of more diverse projects since the success of the film essentially doesn't matter.

The interesting combination of a Korean writer/director and American funding makes something truly unique. One of my favourite parts of the movie is a purposeful mis-translation that I only learnt about from the films IMDB page. After Mija's first run in with the ALF, K, played by Steven Yeun, shouts to her "Mija! Try learning English. It opens new doors!" or so the subtitles say. What he actually says in Korean is "Mija! Also, my name is Koo Soon-bum" a purposefully silly name, a joke the audience would only pick up on if they spoke both languages, challenging the notion that the english language should be the default.

4. Conclusion

Okja is a strange and challenging film but I encourage people to watch it. Bong Joon Ho's signature style of disturbing satire is more apparent in this film than any of his others and deserves attention just because of how different it is. It's not perfect but there were elements that I thought were handled brilliantly. I laughed a few times and I cried at the end which means the film did it's job.

If you are particularly squeamish about processed meat and cruelty to animals then this will probably be a very hard watch for you but there are not many fiction films about this subject matter especially not ones with the guts this film has. For that reason alone it deserves attention. It's message is important even if it's heavy handed.

Just a tip if you do decide to watch it. There's an end credit scene which will pick you up if the ending of the film has you feeling sad.

8/10