Movie Review: “Okja” is a singular triumph of imagination and pure filmmaking craft.
Korean writer and director Bong Joon-ho does not make movies like other people. His mastery of scale has drawn comparisons to Steven Spielberg, and there are even those who are petitioning for him to direct a future installment in the ongoing “Star Wars” universe. I also see a preoccupation with the bond between monsters and children that exists in the films of Guillermo del Toro, as well as a demented and eccentric theatrical flair that he shares with his fellow statesman, Park-Chan Wook.
And yet, you can’t compare Bong’s films to anyone else’s, because they simply don’t feel like anyone else’s. There is a goofy sense of grandeur in his work: like in “The Host,” which balances its genuinely terrifying creature feature duties with a melancholy allegory about a father estranged from his daughter. Or how about his batty “Snowpiercer,” in which a globe-spanning train acts as an allegorical symbol for a kind of new caste system during a dystopic futuristic ice age? Is there another director currently working who can balance capital-M messaging and brazen genre thrills with such exquisite delicacy?
“Okja,” Bong’s sweet and daffy sixth film, was one of the most talked-about pictures at this year’s Cannes film festival, though not for the reasons you might think. Bong’s film is a defiantly cinematic experience: one that’s rich with dizzying, operatic camerawork, sensuous use of color and shadows, and often-breathtaking outdoor cinematography.
However, the fact that the film was picked up and distributed by none other than Netflix meant that “Okja” was greeted with boos and derision before audiences on the Croisette even had a chance to judge the film on its own merits. Though I’m sure most audiences will check out “Okja” from the comfort of their home streaming networks, I encourage real movie-lovers to see this strange, special film on a big screen, if they can. As somebody who went the extra mile to see it in a theater (at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly, where the audience was treated to a gorgeous 35mm print), I can safely say that “Okja” is that rare Netflix import that earns the label “cinematic”.
Perhaps the strangest thing about “Okja,” aside from the initially chilly reception it received at this year’s highest-profile international film festival, is that Bong has essentially tricked Netflix into giving him a $50 million budget to make an undisguised attack on capitalism. Make no mistake: “Okja” is on the side of the resistance. It is a film that hates and despises the oligarchic machine of modern-day corporatism, though its mood is never anything less than joyfully exuberant.
“Okja” is also, it should be said, not a didactic screed. First and foremost, the film is a triumphant adventure picture: the kind of genuinely bizarre, large-scale entertainment that existed long before our current moviegoing landscape became so dominated by franchises and cinematic universes. It is also the openhearted tale of a small Korean girl named Mija and the genetically engineered “super-pig,” Okja, whom she comes to love very much. The fact that Bong throws in nerve-rattling car chases, a band of animal right’s activists led by Paul Dano, genuinely disturbing black comedy, and slaughterhouse footage that’s straight out your worst nightmares… and nevertheless emerges with a cohesive, fully-realized vision… is nothing short of miraculous. Holy Hog Heaven, “Okja” is one of the year’s very best films.
This is Bong doing “E.T.” by way of Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle,” but with a righteously angry and disarmingly sincere liberal message. It is also, above all else, a Bong Joon-ho movie, no matter how many times the director coyly pays tribute to his influences. The result is a thrillingly unorthodox family film with the soul of an impassioned environmental parable — one that’s buoyed by some of the weirdest and most uninhibited acting you’ll see all year.
At times, it can be difficult to know whom “Okja” is really meant for. The movie’s early passages are lovely and picaresque in an entirely PG-13 way, but by the time Okja has been confined to a ghastly abattoir where she is to be butchered alongside her fellow super-pigs, younger viewers may be watching through the cracks in their fingers.
What’s undeniable is that “Okja” is an entirely unprecedented vision: unburdened by an attachment to any pre-existing cultural property, and liberated by Bong’s seemingly boundless imagination. It is a film that is filled with ghoulish gallows humor, ugly spasms of violence and porcine poop gags, and nevertheless manages to say something very vital and essential about who we are as a species. That the movie is centered on a loveable swine who is the size of a small SUV makes the surrealist pleasures of Bong’s new masterpiece all the more refreshing.
“Okja” opens with a chilling preamble that introduces us to the Mirando Corporation. Mirando is a Monsanto-like agricultural conglomerate led by a sniveling, desperately needy bureaucratic sycophant named Lucy Mirando (played by Tilda Swinton, one-upping her hellacious, Thatcher-lite turn in “Snowpiercer” here). As it turns out, Mirando has been instrumental in the creation of these aforementioned super-pigs, twenty-six of whom are being bred and cared for on various farms around the globe when the movie opens. The super-pigs are also unwitting participants in a kind of cruel, Darwinian corporate contest: one where the “victory” involves being paraded around for the company’s stockbrokers before sent to the killing fields.
Okja the super-adorable super-pig is the winner of the contest, but she doesn’t know it yet. When the film opens, the corpulent, happy boar — whose demeanor is somewhere between a puppy and a baby bear — is living a life of peaceful seclusion in the hills of South Korea with Mija (the extraordinary Ahn Seo-hyun), her beloved human guardian. Mija and Okja’s early scenes together are downright cute, which is not really something you can say about any previous Bong Joon-ho movie to date. The director depicts Mija and her animal friend languishing in a verdant, hilly paradise: splashing around beneath waterfalls, searching for food, and sleeping under the trees. Mija’s grandfather Heebong (Byun Hee-bong, from “The Host” and Bong’s underrated noir “Memories of Murder”) is keener on parting ways with the little girl’s leviathan animal chum… especially when he receives an ominous visit from some Mirando flunkies intent on bringing Okja back to the states.
When Mija learns the terrible particulars of Okja’s fate, our young heroine sets out on a breathless quest from Seoul to New York City, all with the hopes of rescuing her best friend. Along the way, she is intercepted by a group of vigilant activists, led by the charismatic and committed Jay (Paul Dano, terrific), who plan to use our heroine to gain access to Mirando’s slaughterhouses. Along the way, Mija has the misfortune of running into the preening T.V. zoologist Dr. Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gylenhaal, doing a demented riff on Steve Irwin by way of Bobcat Goldthwait). Dr. Johnny is a screeching, self-absorbed parasite who contributes nothing of value to the world, and he and Lucy Mirando remain the very convincing personification of evil on Bong’s fairy tale-like universe — though a case could also be made for the silky-smooth Giancarlo Esposito, playing a Mirando exec so deeply entrenched in the corporate spider web that he can recite speeches given to shareholders from memory.
Bong has a way that he likes to work with his actors where they often give broad, cartoonish performances, so I was impressed at the understated nature of Esposito’s work here. In both “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” the actor’s countenance is that of a coiled viper. He’s ready to pounce at any moment, and Esposito lends “Okja” a sinuous charm when it threatens to go off the rails. Newcomer Ahn Seo-hyun is really the heart and soul of the picture: you need to believe that this starry-eyed youngin’ would literally venture across the world to save her animal pal, and Seo-hyun conveys that struggle with heartbreaking clarity. So far, she’s one of the great movie heroes of 2017.
Jake Gylenhaal’s turn, on the other hand, has already begun to divide people. As Dr. Johnny, the normally more subdued actor twists his limbs into pretzel shapes, pops his eyes practically out of his skull, and affects a nasally accent that, for some viewers, will be the audible equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. It’s an unapologetically big performance— one that sometimes suggests an early 90’s slapstick turn from Jim Carrey. I understand why some folks will hate it. And yet, I admired the audacity in Gylenhaal’s daring here, as well as Bong’s integrity in encouraging his actor to go all the way with this cretinous caricature.
Mr. Gylenhaal has got nothing on Ms. Swinton, though, who undergoes another one of her staggering transformations here, effortlessly morphing into this ghastly failure of a character. She and Bong clearly share a kind of creative symbiosis, and one can only hope that this is the first of many collaborations still to come. The fact that Swinton manages to give this monstrous woman — the true villain of the movie, if there is such a thing — something approximating a heart speaks as much to Swinton’s immeasurable talents as it does to Bong’s inherent empathy for even his most twisted characters.
Creating a heightened fantasy reality is the crux upon which a movie like this lives or dies, and “Okja” is a roaring success in terms of immersing the viewer in a world they’ve never quite seen before — at least not like this. The movie’s quiet, bucolic opening passages segue effortlessly into the colorful, almost animated urbane hijinks of the second and third act, and a coda where Mija walks Okja out of the butchery where she’s been sentenced to death — her eyes sadly trailing behind her at all the other doomed super-pigs, who won’t be so lucky as to make it out of this place — almost brought me to tears.
In fact, Okja herself might just be the movie’s finest achievement. Unlike many CGI creatures in glossier, more commercial Hollywood movies, Okja seems to occupy both heft and space within the frame, and the physics of the creature are practically flawless. We come to love Okja for her dumb, yet expressive animal nature: the way her eyes fill with warmth when Mija whispers secrets of the ages into her ear, or the dogged obstinacy she displays when trying to rescue Mija as she tumbles from a cliff. Okja bears the size and make of a hippopotamus, but the tactile, almost photorealistic fashion in which she rolls on her back and snores when she goes to sleep almost reminded me of my cat.
Like all great works of art, “Okja” is also a prescient commentary on the time which it’s set. It’s hard not to listen to Lucy Mirando fret like a teenager over her public image and not think of the leaked reports from Trump’s White House. It’s also hard not to think of both Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movements when Jay and his cohorts take to the streets, dragging the scared corporate suits (the movie’s true swine) into the hell they’ve created for their consumers. Like “The Bad Batch,” Ana Lily Amirpour’s new movie, “Okja” uses genre homage to comment on the turbulent nature of our national mood, the ignominious decisions made by those who wield power, and the innocence that fuels those who rail against the coming tide. Unlike “The Bad Batch,” however, which is practically all style, “Okja” has humor, brains, and a heart to go with its movie-movie thrills. It’s one of the finest films of 2017, and Bong’s masterwork to date. I can’t wait to see it again. Grade: A.
