Skip to main content

A Girl and Her Super Pig


          Bong Joon-Ho is not a director well-known in North America, but he’s certainly making a mark on the stage of world cinema. He’s directed great films like The Host and the amazing Snowpiercer, the latter of which incorporated an international cast of Korean, American, and British actors. His latest film on Netflix, Okja does as well, a similarly strange movie that’s unlike anything else of its kind.
          On a farm in the mountains of South Korea, a girl Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) lives a pleasant life with her grandfather (Byun Hee-bong) and her beloved pet Okja, one of many genetically engineered “super pigs” bred by the Mirando Corporation as a solvent to food shortage. When Okja is declared the best super pig, Mija is happy until she learns Okja is being taken to America where she’ll be slaughtered. So she goes on an ambitious journey to save her, crossing paths with the Animal Liberation Front, who are determined not only to rescue Okja but to take down the Mirando Corporation itself.
          Okja takes the typical story of child and their pet, and turns it into an intense international action drama with very real stakes. It not only takes some unexpected turns, but is presented in a thoroughly unique way, largely due to the nature of the fictional animal and the commentary being made around it. Joon-Ho knows how to properly build tension, as well as shoot exciting action sequences. There’s a particularly thrilling one that lasts almost the duration of the runtime in Seoul. Joon-Ho also succeeds in creating a world that’s just far-fetched enough, but also just feasible enough to potentially be our own. Though there are a few areas where he displays not quite enough familiarity with America.
          Despite the title, the star of the movie is Mija, and Seo-hyun is fantastic in the role. She delivers an emotionally-charged and absolute performance as a girl out of her depth but still willing to go as far as possible to save Okja. Okja herself isn’t the best CGI character, as there are a number of scenes where she doesn’t look real, but the believability comes from her relationship with Mija, and the natural attachment Seo-hyun portrays towards her. That being said, Okja is well-done in terms of looking, sounding, and behaving like an animal, down to very impressive details. And this makes you care about the character especially once she’s in real danger. Hee-bong is quite good as Mija’s grandfather. Tilda Swinton plays the grandiose CEO of the Mirando Corporation and is of course, a delightful villain; though she’s not nearly as entertaining as in Snowpiercer. Paul Dano, who’s used to playing weird roles, is the soft-spoken ideologue leader of the ALF and he’s good -his dialogue on the credo of the Front and his own beliefs can be awkwardly humourous. But as over-the-top as Swinton and Dano can be, they’ve got nothing on Jake Gyllenhaal! He plays Johnny Wilcox, a crazed zoologist who’s the public face of the company; and he’s Bear Grylls meets Douglas Reynholm looking like Ned Flanders. Gyllenhaal over-acts like I’ve never seen him before and it’s hilarious. He’s got the comedic timing down and also the sheer insanity of how the characters’ written, making for the most fun performance in the entire film. There are also good turns from Lily Collins, Shirley Henderson, Yoon Je-moon, a chilling Giancarlo Esposito, and Steven Yeun, proving he can act well in both English and Korean. 
          Joon-Ho really has something to say with this film about the meat industry. There are a few shots taken at animal rights activists and their methods (one character is starving himself to leave as little a carbon footprint as possible -that’s pretty funny), but the movie clearly wants to expose the inhumane treatment of livestock by siphoning it through a fictitious miracle animal. And in this, it doesn’t hold back. There are a few brutal scenes in Okja, one taking place in a slaughterhouse, that drive home the commentary Joon-Ho’s aiming for. What makes this more than a manipulative message is the films’ understanding that it isn’t entirely about that, as much as the film and this theme may be inextricably linked. This is an issue to be raised, but ultimately the needs of the story take precedence. The ending certainly attests to this, but not without imparting some powerful imagery.
          Okja doesn’t have the sheer creative genius end eclectic action of Joon-Ho’s previous endeavour, but it is really original, quite meaningful, and an engaging watch. The central relationship is conveyed, and it has some terrific performances, from the genuinely effecting to the comically large. It’s one of the best Netflix movies you could watch, and a really touching, uniquely strange experience.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Stylish and Charmingly Reinvented David Copperfield

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)  is the most important book Charles Dickens ever wrote. It is not the most famous or influential by any means (that would of course be A Christmas Carol ), but it is the book that is the purest expression of the authors’ style, identity, and worldview. It is his most personal work, semi-autobiographical in its story of the chronology from infancy to adulthood of a character who overcomes great loss and hardships to find a fulfilling life as a writer. To read David Copperfield  is to understand Dickens himself. Armando Iannucci knew this when he decided to make a new adaptation of the novel for a twenty-first century audience. He also knew that Dickens adaptations are ubiquitous at this point. Films are a bit rarer, but every few years a new television adaptation rears its head to keep the authors’ unique world an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
8 comments
Read more