Okja – first look review

If it’s cheap, peo­ple will eat it. No, not the slo­gan for VOD world lead­ers Net­flix, but a line uttered by the CEO of the Miran­do Cor­po­ra­tion in Bong Joon-ho’s Okja – a film which plays a bit like Lassie Come Home inter-bred with Fred­er­ick Wiseman’s eye-water­ing food pro­cess­ing doc­u­men­tary, Meat.

After all the heartache that Bong went through with his excep­tion­al pre­vi­ous, Snow­piercer, it’s heart­en­ing to see that he’s turned his back on the stan­dard­ised Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion line and is look­ing for new ways to attend to the world’s glob­al hunger for great cin­e­ma. And in many ways, that’s exact­ly what Okja is about – it’s Bong in dia­logue with him­self, pick­ing apart the future of the medi­um, and look­ing for new and logis­ti­cal­ly fea­si­ble means of expres­sion. All with the help of an enjoy­ably brash script writ­ten by British journo Jon Ronson.

Enter Til­da Swin­ton, who now seems to only want to play twin car­toon bad guy roles. She is Lucy Miran­do, heir to a cor­po­ra­tion who have got a seri­ous pub­lic image prob­lem. Before a full-body PR cleanse to become a squeaky clean agro-chem­i­cal con­cern, they kin­da made their mil­lions from the pro­duc­tion of Napalm. But now they’re cap­i­tal­is­ing on a mir­a­cle, a new breed of super pig which is so large that it will put an end to world hunger while lin­ing the pock­ets of the hap­py-clap­py Miran­do share­hold­ers. And as a lit­tle stunt, to present the world their car­ing face, the com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed a com­pe­ti­tion where local farm­ers from across the globe enter a 10-year race to breed the most beau­ti­ful super pig, which will be revealed at a tick­er tape parade in New York City.

And that’s where Okja comes in. She’s a porcine colos­sus with a mea­sure of human sen­tience, liv­ing the sweet life in moun­tains out­side Seoul and nuz­zling with the farmer’s daugh­ter, Mija (Ahn Seo-Hyun). With a min­i­mum of fuss, Bong cements their tight rela­tion­ship, as Mija toss­es fruit into Okja’s mouth, while Okja is quick to the res­cue when dan­ger rears its head. But then the com­pe­ti­tion is now over, and it’s time for this lov­able pig to up sticks and meet its mak­er – in both sens­es of the word.

This is big, not-so-dumb fun with a girl trav­el­ling the globe to res­cue her best friend from cash-grab­bing evil­do­ers. There’s only real­ly one way out of this sto­ry, even if Bong does often likes to turn down dark­er, less scenic byways. And polit­i­cal­ly, the film trades in shrug­ging ​“you’re damned if you do…” pes­simism rather than sug­gest we should all become veg­ans. But in the end it’s less inter­est­ed in chid­ing soci­ety or cap­i­tal­ism for caus­ing suf­fer­ing to ani­mals, and more inter­est­ing in empha­sis­ing how tru­ly bizarre the won­der­ful the sim­ple act of eat­ing is.

It’s strange that, with full cre­ative con­trol over the project, Bong has deliv­ered per­haps his most con­ven­tion­al and emo­tion­al­ly stream­lined film. He plays as much as he can with the sim­ple arc struc­ture and a set of arche­typ­al side play­ers, while Ronson’s fruity, zeit­geist plun­der­ing dia­logue makes sure that all the rel­e­vant cul­tur­al touch­stones are account­ed for. Swin­ton is pre­dictably grand as pris­tine cor­po­rate idol Lucy Miran­do, while Jake Gyl­len­haal brings the ham big time as sell-out TV zool­o­gist (and recre­ation­al vivi­sec­tion­ist) Dr Johnny.

But it’s Ahn who pro­vides the beat­ing heart of this movie – she’s like the plucky hero­ine of a Stu­dio Ghibi epic who allows for all the dis­parate parts to work in tan­dem. She is the unsmil­ing avenger with noth­ing to lose, will­ing to risk life and limb to pro­tect her pig­gy pal. Even though the human-ani­mal rela­tion­ship is hasti­ly sketched, her pierc­ing eyes and sur­feit of plucky deter­mi­na­tion act as a con­stant reminder of the 10 unseen years this unlike­ly duo have spent together.

Okja is a good film rather than a great one, per­haps lack­ing the ele­ment of sur­prise that made Snow­piercer such a dream. But if Cannes jury pres­i­dent Pedro Almod­ó­var soft­ens his anti-Net­flix stance when it comes to dol­ing out the sil­ver­ware, hope­ful­ly Ahn will at least be in with a shot of bring­ing home the bacon.