Okja (2017) Review

A lot of fuss has been made over South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. He has a filmography stretching back 24 years and enjoys a demi-god-like status in Korea. Therefore, his $50 million, 2017 feature 'Okja' released exclusively for Netflix (and a select few independent cinemas in Korea) was something of an event. I'll confess this is my first experience with his work and I am late to the party, again. Last year, when Okja first hit the streaming platform, there was a stir online. The film was booed at Cannes (by those opposed to its release on Netflix) and it spawned some fantastic debate with regards to its major themes of mass consumption, corporate greed and activism. I'm mostly interested in how it performs as a film but, as those who have seen it will confirm, to talk about Okja without talking about its underlying politics, is the same as not saying a word at all.

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The plot begins in simple framing. An international factory farming corporation, Mirando, has achieved the impossible: it has succeeded in genetically engineering the world's first 'super pig'. This is a larger, fatter and more delicious refinement on the original. In a shrewd marketing scheme, company CEO, Lucy Mirando, decides to send 10 of these super pigs across the globe to be raised independently by randomly-selected local farmers. This is to promote the corporation's image as an empathetic, sustainably-minded business. The farmer who raises the best pig receives worldwide acclaim and, we assume, some sort of financial reward.

Some fifteen minutes in, you're already worried. It is too cute, too joyous and too personable to be trusted. As you'd expect, super pigs are intelligent, gentle, shy, love roaming the outdoors and, like their real-life counterparts, entirely unsuited to life on a battery farm. You will anticipate a painful, potentially tear-ridden experience from the beginning onwards and you will have good reason. Mija, Okja's surrogate human sister and best-friend is tricked and the pig is stolen from her. Hilarity, tragedy and rebellion ensues.

Usually, it's a deal-breaker when I feel that a script is badly formatted. I did question myself when it came to Okja, wondering whether criticisms regarding structure are ethnocentric and whether I had grown too accustomed to safe, formulated Western narratives but I'm not sure if that is the issue here. In any country, I think it will be apparent that Okja is a film striving for clearer characters and a more streamlined ideal. It shovels a lot of inessential subplots, it juggles about 4 or 5 premises instead of 1 and the dialogue is about as fat and cumbersome as the pigs it aims to expound. Another hitch, is Jake Gyllenhaal's self-indulgent, actorly and downright exhausting performance as failed TV personality, Johnny Wilcox. I think there was probably, at some point, a smart and relevant design for this character and yet any semblance of this is stifled by Gyllenhaal's single-minded determination to dominate the screen. A shame. Despite this (and a superfluous family-drama-subplot and a confused portrayal of animal activists), the film succeeds tremendously. Why? Because, it hits you where it hurts and where it matters.

If anyone deserves credit for Okja, it is the artists responsible for the film's special effects, both practical and animated. The pig itself is a thing of wonder. Rarely is so much of a film's success owed to a single pair of eyes. Those two eyes, that carry all of our expectations, wonder and investment and that convey an abundance of intelligence, pain and compassion. This is the brilliance of the film. Our conversations turn immediately to the subject of animal rights, upon viewing, not because of the script or the acting but more, I think, because of those eyes. In them, we recognise a familiar sentience. They contain all of the trust and fear and pain of our pets and livestock. They are entirely yielding, confused but understanding of their place in the world.

Okja is not about one animal but animals worldwide. It is a brutal, unflinching examination of battery farm culture. It draws stark comparisons between our agricultural methods and genocide. It does so with some serious conviction. You have been warned.

How much pain do we cause our livestock in the name of gluttony? How accountable are we for the destruction of their lives? Do their lives even matter? Joon-ho says yes and that we need to do better.

Okja is as painful as it promises to be. It is everything we fear the most in ourselves. It is an exploration of narcissism and greed and apathy, if not cruelty. It is about feeling, more than thinking and it is messy and unpredictable. That's what's great about fantasy, it allegorises the messy and the unpredictable reality. It first takes our most painful truths and packages them into a cuddly, humorous parcel, then it reopens them, slowly, carefully and, before we know it, we are staring at something very real and quite affecting.

★★★★☆