four ½ snouts up for bong joon-ho’s okja, co-produced with netflix in 2017 and streamed by me last night. this may be the first time i’ve gotten to use my snout-based rating system to rate a movie that is actually about pigs and where there are numerous snorts in the film.
like his oscar winning parasite, okja (pronounced oak-ya) is an engaging disturbing comedy with a deep social theme. the similarities pretty much end there. the film centers on an 11 year old girl, mija (played wonderfully by seo-hyun ahn), who has grown up with a super pig named okja. okja was created in the labs of a giant agrochemical corporation called mirando (doesn’t take an evil genius to figure out what real corporation mirando is based on).
a series of events ensue taking us from gorgeous mountains where astounding cgi okja and mija play and gather food all day to seoul to new york. many of the characters and actors in the film are well known americans (tilda swinton, paul dano, jake gyllenhaal). the film toggles between korean and english.
doesn’t look like okja has a rating, but if it did, i’d give it a real pg-13 rather than what is typically given now. yes, it’s an intense film about how animals are mistreated in meat production. but it’s also a love story about a girl and her pig. i’d say the violence in this film is waaaay more appropriate to a kid level than anything i’ve seen in, say, the incredibles. and almost all of what is happening to the animals or about to happen is implied rather than shown. the worst things are very much not that bad by today’s standards.
other than mija and her grandfather, most of the characters and costumes in the film are way over the top in a marvelously memorable way. and it makes its points about meat production in service of the plot without being overly didactic.
the film made me glad i’ve eaten predominantly vegan for sometime. i’ll confess that i’ve actually done it for health reasons rather than out of solidarity with animals but this film helped advance my consciousness of that choice.
