Summary
When international food conglomerate, Mirando, genetically engineers a food source called Super Pigs, one little peasant girl is given one as part of a publicity stunt. Ten years later Mirando wants it back but Mija isn’t giving up on her friend, without a fight.
The Film
After the amazing showing of “Parasite” at this years Academy Awards (Our #1 Highlight of the show) we knew it was up to us to highlight some of Bong Joon-ho’s other movies for people that might only now be discovering him. “Okja” is one of my favorites of his and is an attempt at the same sort of mix of humor, heart, and seriously dark subject matter that “Parasite” delivers in spades.
One of the main reasons that I really like this movie is how out there and random certain elements of it happen to be. As a Netflix Original, it is obvious that Joon-ho, and his actors, enjoyed an immense amount of freedom that I am certain would not have been afforded them at a traditional studio. The result is that the plot, exposition, characters, and dark elements of “Okja” are many times as ‘out there’ as an anime.
A traditional studio would turn up its nose at the needless inclusion of a twin character, the outlandish performance of Jake Gyllenhaal (“Velvet Buzzsaw”), or a main character that doesn’t speak English throughout the entire film, let alone the very dark forced mating of the super pig named Okja which is played up for its horror. As a result of this freedom, the film is wildly uneven. There are crazy chase scenes that are frenetic and tense with new parties joining at every turn, that horrible mating scene that churns your stomach, and even some serenely paced idyllically set scenes between Mija and Okja. Depending on when you walk into this film, it would appear wildly different to you.
Some might see this as a detraction. Even I might normally agree with them, but in the case of “Okja” this is one of my favorite aspects of the film. Just about the time you would normally get bored by just watching a little girl play in the forest with her pet giant piggy the tone of the film changes and the stakes become life or death. Just when you think you can’t handle anymore of Jake Gyllenhaal abusing a CGI animal, we cut to a lavish parade scene with traces of espionage. If you aren’t feeling, or are feeling too much, any particular part of the film, it doesn’t last that long before you are on to the next scene in this bizarre excursion through a tonal jungle.
The movie isn’t just a parlor trick, though, changing tones just often enough to keep an audience engaged but letting them down when it comes to story, character, and themes. It is a great example of how character, plot, and theme, ideally, dance together to create a film which resonates in your heart, expands your intellectual horizons, and presents a human reality that you will mull over for days.
Beginning with the characters, while there are many outrageous or hyperbolic examples there are several incredibly earnest characters to ground the film and give an audience an emotional touchpoint. Even Okja, the computer generated pig goes through emotional changes that seem more grounded than some of the people who work for Mirando, an intentional choice on the part of Joon-ho, I believe. The hyperbolic characters that work for the corporation, fight against it, and fight for it are therefore perfectly situated to present some of the larger themes of the film in ways that are easily understandable. They almost seem to be a part of an entirely different film because their concerns are so different from Mija’s and Okja’s.
As Mija decides to leave her home in a desperate search for her best friend Okja, she is not just stepping into a world that is colored slightly different from hers. It is a world which is actively hostile to her if it cannot extract value from her. Okja, the giant piggy, actively saves Mija’s life in the first act and the rest of the film is a cavalcade of humans who care less about her than the meat they can scrape from Okja’s bones.
This dichotomy is film making at its best. Placing different experiences of the world next to each other and forcing us to consider them both through the lens of a singular voice, the director. One may disagree, agree, or be indifferent to this viewpoint but there is no denying that what we are seeing is Bong Joon-ho struggling with the problems of modern societies and the ways that they butt up against less modern ones. This man-behind-the-curtain dynamic is often lost on the average movie goer but as I watch this film I see Bong Joon-ho’s heart on display. These are issues and problems that he sees but doesn’t know how to fix and therefore creates art depicting it.
Thankfully, his skill at presenting this dichotomy is profound, entertaining, and lingering as we can’t stop thinking about his films after we’ve seen them. This is why I, and other cinephiles, have been eating up his films for years and will continue to do so as he, hopefully, enjoys greater name recognition and doors begin to open which had previously been shut to him.
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