When I sat down to watch Okja,
I knew only that this was a recent Korean film, highlighting the warm
relationship between a young girl and a supersized CGI pig. My guess was that
the film would have something of an ET vibe, featuring tenderness,
innocence, and a certain amount of whimsy. And, to be honest, these elements
can all be found in Okja. But it didn’t at first occur to me that any
film written and directed by Bong Joon-ho—who followed up Okja with 2019’s
lacerating Oscar-winner, Parasite—would doubtless be well laced with
black humor.
I also didn’t realize at first that Okja is a true East-meets-West collaboration between Bong and Hollywood, with Netflix and Brad Pitt’s adventuresome Plan B Entertainment much involved. A good part of the story takes place in New York City, and key roles are played by box-office favorites Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal’s role as the sell-out host of a TV animal show is hilarious, though I found him absolutely unrecognizable, even after I saw his name in the end-credits. As for Swinton, she takes her usual perverse delight in playing a character who’s obnoxious in the extreme. Her role is that of a corporation head who has nothing good to say about her father (an investor in Napalm) and her sister (under whose company leadership a lake exploded). She coos to her team about her own development of adorable super-pigs, whose meat will be (among other good things) inexpensive and environmentally friendly. Of course she’s lying through her teeth, and Giancarlo Esposito (of Breaking Bad fame) is on hand to help take things from bad to worse.
But these aren’t the only questionable characters in Okja. When the super-pig she’s helped to raise in the mountains of Korea is summoned to New York (supposedly to be crowned as top pig in a competition arranged by Swinton’s company), young Mija can’t prevent her beloved pet from being taken from her. But she finds she has some unlikely allies, members of the Animal Liberation Front, who’ll do just about anything to protect animals from human exploitation. Led by the (usually) soft-spoken Paul Dano, they at first come across as earnest and reasonable, but their passion for their cause leads them, at times, into outrageous acts. Their intentions may be good, but often they seem as crazy as the greedy capitalists they oppose with single-minded zeal.
So what becomes of the young girl and the giant pig? I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that in this film everyone ultimately gets what he or she deserves. Though there are some stomach-churning moments that spell out the ultimate fate of most of those giant pigs, our two favorite characters live to enjoy another, brighter day.
Okja had its world premiere in 2017 at the Cannes Film Festival. Despite some technical difficulties during the screening, it was rewarded with a four-minute standing ovation, and was nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or. Filmed in Korean and English, the film makes a deliberate mistranslation (by Korean-American actor Steven Yeun, playing one of the ALF activists) an essential part of its plot.
By the way, anyone checking out the recent DVD (which boasts a separate disc full of extras about the film’s technical challenges) should be sure to keep watching until the very end. Following a long set of end-credits, there’s a sardonic coda featuring the re-united ALF team. It’s as though Bong can’t bear to end his film on a note of Happily Ever After.
