"If it's cheap, people will eat it."
South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho's second English-language feature (a Korean-American co-production), Okja, is a strange yet fairly polished, madcap cinematic journey that riffles on child-monster fantasies and corporate social satire. Centred on the life and political machinations of the eponymous giant super pig, the film is a lushly filmed political adventure story about twenty-first century progress (or lack thereof).
Starring newcomer Ahn Seo-hyun, the film starts off wondrously enough as an Amblin-style child-and-pet movie before veering into political activism and ruminations on corporate global culture. Seo-hyun's Mija adores her bio-engineered pig with a fighting loyalty and enthusiasm enough to protect her from Seoul to New York City. Her relationship with the unorthodox pet is the beating heart of the film, carrying us through the stranger detours they take.
Paul Dano and Steven Yeun as Animal Liberation Front activists make for good faces of radical veganism, both carrying the militant plot forward. Tilda Swinton and Giancarlo Esposito dutifully play our corporate overlords in manically energetic, seriously earnest performances, respectively. Conversely, Jake Gyllenhaal gives an absolutely bonkers character portrayal as the bizarre television personality Dr. Johnny, an unhinged celebrity zoologist.
Bong's sense of wonder, executed with impeccable CGI, creature design, and visual storytelling by cinematographer Darius Khonji, makes the film's theme of moral complexities and mass consumption a more artistically thoughtful endeavour than it initially appears on the surface. His penchant for problematically smart yet flawed characters is intriguing, given that the script was co-written by Welsh journalist Jon Ronson.
Ojka is a strange but worthy effort, more often exhilarating than searing in its execution, with wondrous flourishes. However, it's often a clash of sensibilities, as Bong mixes his Eastern storytelling style with Western influences that don't always mesh completely. That said, it's an effective and colourful dissection of our relationship to food, capitalism, and animals.
Okja is available to stream on Netflix. Update: A special presentation of Okja (and video chat Q&A with director Bong Joon-ho) screens at the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Panorama and Gateway streams.
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