Part Spielbergian adventure, part
environmentalist fable, and part barbed anti-corporate satire, “Okja” — the latest from South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (“Snowpiercer”) — is the
story of a young girl named Mija (a wonderful An Seo Hyun) and her best friend, a massive, genetically
engineered pig named Okja.
Okja is the result of the Mirando
Corporation’s attempt to solve world hunger by developing a cheap, easily sustainable,
meat-based superfood — for a tidy profit, of course. When Okja
gets called back to America to fulfill her intended purpose, Mija must evade CEO Lucy Mirando
(Tilda Swinton), who’s eager to make Okja the main
attraction at the company’s gala presentation, and works with a militant animal
rights activist group run by Paul Dano to bring her
beloved pig home safely. Jake Gyllenhaal is also on hand, swinging for the
fences with his performance as a zoologist television personality who’s the
bitter current face of the Mirando company’s
PR campaign.
Joon-Ho delights in juggling wild tonal shifts, and “Okja” is no different, veering from slapstick to vicious
black comedy to drama, often within the same scene. While the film plays as a
riff on “E.T.” for a time, violence and language make it not nearly as
kid-friendly as it first appears, and the slaughterhouse-set climax has
significantly more in common with “Schindler’s List.” Somehow it all works:
it’s not subtle, and it’s often messy, but always wildly entertaining as it
seeks to leave its audience with some tough to swallow food for thought.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2017.
