Okja
Netflix pulls off a dazzling high-wire act on the small screen
“It’s all edible except the squeal.”
Okja was hit with unfavourable criticism during its screening at the notoriously snobby Cannes Film Festival. As the opening credits rolled and the Netflix logo was, almost ironically, projected onto the big screen, it was met with boos from the audience. I can’t quite imagine any were booing when the end credits began to roll though. Okja is a film that deserves a wide release on the big screen: it is visually stunning, a rollicking and thoroughly entertaining two-hour thrill-ride that reminds us what is so great about the movies.
The plot revolves around the relationship between a young South Korean girl, Mija, and her giant ‘pet’ pig, Okja, who is more like an anthropomorphic hippo that spoons her at night, than a dirty, porcine beasty. Little does Mija know that Okja is a genetically engineered super-pig being bred for the Mirando Corporation. The corporate villains have swapped napalm for chipolatas and set up a contest where farmers across the globe will develop the super-pig over the course of 10 years with the best-looking (best-tasting) one being crowned the winner, and Okja will soon be snatched from Mija, shipped off to America and turned into bacon. Though director Bong Joon-ho has been compared to Steven Spielberg not least for his stature and popularity in his native South Korea, along with his directorial range and mastery of the cinematic craft, and now for his tale of a child’s friendship with something non-human, this is not a family friendly film like E.T. or The BFG. Bong Joon-ho has become known for his sharp tonal shifts, and like many filmmakers, he can handle them with the utmost care so that he never loses his audience. In fact, Okja falls somewhere between My Neighbour Totoro and the Georges Franju slaughterhouse documentary Le Sang des bêtes. It shifts from Miyazaki-esque magic to a porcine holocaust as the young Mija, and the audience, receive a serious reality check.
There is a resemblance also to the Gene Wilder vehicle Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It is at times a whimsical, psychedelic, childhood fantasy, but always with a heart of darkness that runs deep. And then there’s the larger-than-life Willy Wonka type at the head of the film’s evil Mirando Corporation. Tilda Swinton is electric as the candy cane Cruella de Vil, Lucy Mirando. Swinton is also credited as a co-producer having worked with Bong to grow Okja from its embryonic stage, before employing English journalist and writer Jon Ronson (perhaps best known for his Frank screenplay) to write the film. You can imagine that her and Bong had such a great time on Snowpiercer, where Swinton plays the wicked villain seriously in need of a dentist, Mason, that they wanted to do it all over again. But it is Ahn Seo-Hyun who threatens to steal the show. We live in a great time for child screen acting and her performance as the energetic, loveable Mija is another to add to the list. Long-time Bong collaborator Hee-Bong Byun also returns as her grandpa.
But generally the film trades in wacky caricatures. Jake Gyllenhaal hams it up (pun intended) as a drunk sell-out Nigel Thornberry type, “animal lover” Johnny Wilcox. And has Paul Dano’s awkward countenance ever seemed more comfortable in the role of the leader of a ragtag bunch of hypervegans? A scene that crashes through an underground shopping centre in Seoul whilst John Denver’s Annie’s Song plays, involving the gang of swine liberators, may well be one of the best cinematic moments of the year so far, ridiculous and moving in equal parts. Upon its completion I wanted to stand up and clap. It is a microcosm of the entire film: over-the-top and wild. That is one of the film’s greatest strengths, a strength that Bong surely learnt after the success of the similarly weird sci-fi/social satire Snowpiercer. Bong’s unique brand of sci-fi feels highly original yet hard to define. It’s raucous and loud, unpretentious and endlessly inventive.
Bong’s currency is often his unsubtly. His complex kaleidoscopic mirrors of our own world are not stretching for realism, they are riotous assemblies with just enough heft and heart to keep us on board. Okja is a political piñata that Bong keeps on beating. The fictional world of Okja is suitably as weird as the act of eating, and the process that gets food onto our place. Bong’s hideously warped world, monstrous and wondrous in turns, is like an episode of The Twilight Zone shot out of a confetti cannon. It’s the bold cinematic representation of the way that a culture of consumption distorts reality, something that only a truly unique mind could conjure up and pull off with such aplomb.
Okja is a reality check set in a highly unrealistic realm. The film contrasts the unassuming farm and the sterile, technological world of Mirando Corp, the dark face of global capitalism. And then there’s Mija and her grandpa. He has lived for many years and understands how the real world operates. We sympathise with a man who is trying to provide for his orphaned granddaughter despite what at first appears to be a callous decision. We know Okja’s fate, even if the heartbroken Mija still hasn’t fully comprehended it yet. We want to live in that realm of blissful ignorance in the mountains, with the warm sun poking through the canopies of the forest and dancing upon our face. But eventually, Okja shows us the real world in dramatic and brutal fashion.
It may sound preachy and manipulative — Okja is effectively an adorable anthropomorphic cuddle machine — but this is in fact not the case. Bong shows us a vision of our own world, reflected in a funfair’s house of mirrors. He is not trying to make an aggressive political comment but is rather using cinema as a medium to expose how strange, how dark, and how nonsensical our world can sometimes appear. Despite never hoping to grapple with issues too complex, being the multi-coloured adventure trip that it is, the film is not so simplistic in its scope. It is a film about the conflicting, and often warped agendas that arise as a by-product of global capitalism. Even the environmentalists are complex in their motives, twisting their own moral “credo” for their gain.
It is a film that mixes all these conflicts into a sickly sweet cocktail. It’s the kind of idiosyncratic escapism that is so hard to get financed by a major studio nowadays. Just look at the fate of a number of other recent big-budget films. Okja, and Netflix, sets itself apart from this, not forcing Bong’s rare vision through the meat-grinder. There is as much risk in this film as there is in Gyllenhaal’s unchained performance, and ultimately it pays off. This is often the case for Bong, with many of his films balancing conflicting ideas and tones, pulling off the combination in a dazzling high-wire act. Hopefully the success of Okja encourages Netflix to put their faith in auteur filmmakers, because if they do, then I am excited for the future of small screen cinema.
