Okja (2017): Something to Squeal About

Okja is an entertaining, sometimes silly, sometimes disturbing yet intriguing film that was released in theaters and streaming on Netflix simultaneously on June 28 this year.  For a reviewer, it’s also a problem movie - in the sense that Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well are considered problem plays: the picture is hard to characterize.  This is a somewhat the case with respect to director Bong Joon Ho’s other movies as well, at least the two films that have had some impact here in the States.

For example, the genre of his 2006 film, The Host, about a monster - sort of a cross between a dragon and a big ugly fish - who comes to terrorize a seaside town, is described on the movie website iMDb as “comedy, drama, horror”.  Snowpiercer, released in the USA in July 2014, fared a little better, characterized as “action, drama, sci-fi”, but one easily could have added ”satire, social criticism” to the labeling.

And so it is with Okja. It is a coming-of age action picture, a sci-fi adventure saga, a comedy, a social satire, and a moralistic exhortation. It ends on a discomfiting, thought provoking note, but starts out looking very much like a children’s story.

The film is named for the giant pig-like animal at its center, a creature “developed” by a giant US-based multi-national corporation but raised with love by a young girl and her grandfather in the Edenic mountains of South Korea. Okja looks like some sort of hybrid between a giant hippopotamus and a pig, with a doglike personality only more intelligent. Oddly she does not have a pig’s snout.  Created by the amazing artists at Method Studios, the creature seems remarkably real – even cute, if one can describe a two ton hippo-pig as cute. Her best friend is the girl, Mija, who has been her constant companion for the last 10 years; and the feeling is mutual.

Okja the movie opens with an elaborate PR event presided over by Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), the CEO of the giant Mirando Corporation. She slowly descends a curved stairway in a crisp white dress, her platinum hair gleaming, her voice cooing as she announces the rebirth of Mirando Inc as an ecologically and socially conscious force for good (in contrast to its formerly evil ways under her now deceased daddy). The company has discovered a new breed of “super pig” on a small Chilean farm, she says, and aims to breed them as a revolutionary new-age, eco-friendly, non-gmo protein source – a solution to rising food prices and world hunger. Right now, she adds, Mirando has twenty-six super piglets which have been placed with local farmers in 26 countries around the world to be raised to maturity over the next ten years. What’s more, there’s a competition to see which of these will raise the best super pig – to be announced at a gala event at the end of that time.

The film then cuts to the home of Mija and Okja ten years on. The environment is simple, lush,  gorgeous, idyllic. We meet Mija and Okja. We see their childish innocence and lovely relationship. We are lulled by the beauty of it all. And then everything changes.

Okja is reclaimed by the Mirando people.  She’s taken to Seoul en route to New York City. Although she’s apparently the best of the super pigs, she is treated like a beast, rather than an award winner, much less a girl’s companion. But Mija, though only a thirteen-year-old country girl, somehow follows, determined to rescue her friend. And suddenly, improbably we’re watching an action-comedy-thriller. The Animal Liberation Front gets into the act, led by Paul Dano. There are wild chase scenes, scary moments, slapstick moments too. A reunification. I don’t want to be too specific, but much of this is fun stuff.

Until it’s not. There’s a plan to expose the bad guys, then a double cross. The action moves to New York for the crowning of the winner of the big contest. (Remember the contest?) The plan goes somewhat awry, and - now that they’ve got us hooked - the film takes a darker turn, and we not only learn about but actually see what the Mirandos are really doing – and it isn’t pretty.  Still, there is, eventually, a happy ending – sort of.

But some hard questions have been raised, for those of us who are carnivores anyway.  After all, the whole super pig project was intended to produce meat, right? To feed the hungry, right? And even more importantly, to sell at profit to the consuming public. Having grown fond of Okja, seeing scenes of a stockyard filled with doomed creatures just like her, and then the industrialized slaughterhouse … well, that stuff makes you shiver – and think. This is, of course, just what director Joon-Ho Bong wants.  

 Joon-Ho (referred to as Bong Joon Ho for those of us who like to see surnames last, rather than first) has a dim view of scientists, rich folks and corporate capitalists - especially American ones. In The Host, the trouble all started when an American callously dumped toxic industrial chemicals into the Han River. In Snowpiercer, an experiment to counteract global warming has gone catastrophically wrong, causing a worldwide ice age, the survivors of which are all aboard a globe-circling train strictly segregated by social and economic class. Now, In Okja we have a story demonizing the craven, public-be-damned attitudes of Big Meat.

Thirteen-year-old Seo–Hyun Ahn is pretty amazing as Mija. The kid can act, and – along with the computer designed Okja - she carries this very interesting movie. Tilda Swinton does a nice job as Lucy Mirando (and her sister Nancy, as well) – even though  Lucy is more comic book caricature than a fleshed-out person. She certainly gets the idea across that industrial meat processors specifically, and multi-national mega corporations generally, with their myopic, singular focus on profit – over social responsibility or compassion or any other moral virtues – cannot be trusted.  Paul Dano seems appropriately serious and empathetic as the A.L.F. leader opposed to these folks. Unfortunately, Jake Gyllenhaal gives perhaps the most embarrassing performance of his career here as a guy called Johnny Wilcox – an over the top TV animal show host.

I wouldn’t call Okja a great movie, it’s a bit too inconsistent in style and tone and, for my taste, a bit too facile and unequivocal in delivering it’s message. It does pack a wallop, though.

Based on some of the visual and dramatic content in the latter part of the movie, along with a liberal sprinkling of F-bombs here and there, Okja has earned a TV-MA rating, roughly equivalent to an R rating from the MPAA, i.e. for mature audiences only. This is too bad in a way, as much of the film would be enjoyed and appreciated by children – but the ending is strong, and could be quite disturbing to those 14 and under. For most of the rest of us it may be unsettling but in a good way, I’d hope.

120 minutes

Grade B+

Available on Netflix – streaming or DVD.