Sober Review of "Okja": Be Careful What You Eat
SPOILERS ABOUND
Netflix’s identity is defined by television. The streaming service has taken a drastic shift from its early days, where it started as a movie delivery service. In the current internet culture, binge watching is king, making television the heir apparent. The “flix” have migrated on mostly to other streaming services. To compensate, Netflix has churned out original content at an incredible rate, but besides Cary Fukunaga’s critically acclaimed Beasts of No Nation, they have yet to produce a film that can capture a wider audience while also holding up critically (I’m looking at you, The Ridiculous 6).
Which is why Okja, Netflix’s latest original film, is so important for the future of the company. Delivering a hit that deals with popular social issues, featuring some of the best actors in Hollywood, and directed by an acclaimed foreign director would be a tremendous feather in their cap. In recent weeks, the marketing and buzz for this film have hit a fever pitch online and it seemed poised to usher in a new age of filmmaking for Netflix. And is it a hit?
…eh.
Is it a good movie? Yes.
Did I like it? Not really.
Okja, directed by South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho, is the story of a girl and her superpig. A tale as old as time, right? No one can accuse this film of lacking originality. Okja, the titular swine, is one of twenty-six superpigs distributed across the world by the Mirando Corporation, headed up by the brace-faced Lucy Mirando, to become a new major food source that is more plentiful and eco-friendly. After a visit by the eccentric scientific personality Dr. Johnny Wilcox, portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, Okja is taken from her home and her owner Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun). After a run-in with the “distinguished” Animal Liberation Front, led by the honor-bound Jay (Paul Dano), and a mistranslation by one of their members, Mija is tricked into sending her friend to New York, but then engages in a plot to free her friend before she is sent to the slaughter and expose the Mirando Corporation’s inhumane treatment of the superpigs.
So, what works about this movie?
The best thing about Okja is the energy behind the characters. Most characters are engaging, be it the dual performances of Tilda Swinton or the various members of the ALF. Even the characters with the smallest of roles, such as Mr. Mundo or the exasperated truck driver of the Mirando Corporation, have an innate energy and likability behind them. A pleasant surprise was Steven Yeun as Kay, the misguided disciple of Jay, who features the only real character development in the movie. Ahn Seo-hyun holds the film down with her simple yet determined portrayal of Mija.
Okja herself is wonderfully captured. Some shots felt uncanny, with the CGI perhaps not being up to snuff when Okja was farther in the background. However, Andy Serkis works some magic here yet again with the facial expressions and overall body language of Okja. You see her smile, you can tell when she’s afraid, you know when she’s been traumatized. Her tears feel real to you. For a movie that doesn’t spend a whole lot of time developing the relationship between Mija and Okja, you wholeheartedly believe in it, partially due to Mija’s determination but also largely in part to the viewer’s being invested in Okja. It makes it all the worse when Okja undergoes her hardships.
But that is because these superpigs tug at your heartstrings. They are smart, they have emotion, they are self-sacrificing for those they love, and they make you question factory farming. That last point sounds like a lesser point at first. I mean, of course I know it’s a terrible thing, but I still go out and eat a burger at a restaurant once a week. But when Mija, Jay, and Kay rush into the slaughterhouse through a field of superpigs, and when Okja is led up the ramp to the slaughter, my heart dropped when I thought it would be the end. The most emotional moment of the film comes when two parents lift the fence and toss their newborn child underneath in the hopes of rescuing it. You can’t help but sit back and wonder at what point this may happen with genetically modified organisms, and you also wonder whether it is worth the allure of ending hunger and reducing the carbon footprint. The film never judges the public for eating the products produced from these factory farms, but it does hope that you think about when enough is enough, which is one of the film’s great successes.
Before mentioning the film’s flaws, I must address what I feel will be one of the more dividing aspects of this movie: the Nicolas Cage-like performance (which I mean in the most endearing sense) of Jake Gyllenhaal. Wilcox embodies what is the film’s biggest flaw: a wildly inconsistent tone. Every time Wilcox is on screen, the movie shifts to a surrealist comedy. Gyllenhaal speaks solely with his eyes wide and voice an octave higher than natural, a cartoon character come to life. His personality is great for the screen, but when the cameras are down and Wilcox is interacting with board members or drunkenly tormenting Okja, the magic is gone. He becomes a sad man, all too aware of the fact that time has passed him by. It’s a character that could be interesting but ends up feeling very out of place in the movie. He has no significant role in the plot and he disappears for the last twenty-five minutes of the movie, where it seemed that there could be some sort of closure in a revisit. What Wilcox does do, however, is make you buy that the superpig is one of the least strange aspects of the movie. As viewers, we all buy into Okja while we raise an eyebrow to this man who is just a slightly hyperbolic version of popular animal scientists that we have all seen before. In this sense, I found Gyllenhaal’s performance to be pitch perfect.
That does not save the tone from feeling wildly uneven throughout the film. A scene focusing on the ALF watching Okja’s traumatizing visit to the laboratory in which she was created is particularly disjointed, as is the ending to Mija’s first chase to reclaim Okja (hint: it ends with poop). Bong is no stranger to mixing in comic moments with serious content, as in his critical-darling Snowpiercer, but here, the transitions feel more disjointed. It’s hard to go from a rape, to a beating, and then to quips and more antics from Dr. Wilcox, and though not every attempt to juggle the varying tones is a failure, I feel that Bong either needed to further embrace absurdity or bring some characters back down to Earth.
For a film that wants its audience to think more about the production of its food, we get very little of a view behind the curtain. I feel that Tilda Swinton was wasted as the CEO of the Mirando Corporation (and to a lesser extent, Giancarlo Esposito as her number two). Tilda plays the twins Mirando, but neither has enough screen time to fully flesh out. In fact, I think that Nancy, the twin that takes over in the final act and has much less screen time, is the much more compelling figure, as it gives Swinton a lovely air of excess with which she doesn’t hesitate to chew scenery. However, both characters are by far the most forgettable of the main cast. For a film that has such an inoffensive lens into our obsession with factory farming, I expected to learn more about these figures and why they operated in the food industry the way that they did. However, only Nancy gives any sort of introspection with her curt summary of society: “If it’s cheap, they’ll eat it.”
Okja is not the hit that Netflix needs to cement itself as a serious film production company. However, it will find an audience with its solid characters, eccentric energy, and lovable superpig. It is encouraging to see Netflix take these risks, even if they aren’t a home run. Okja is much like the eco-friendly vegan restaurant down the block. It’s important, it’s good that it’s there, and some people might love it, but if you’re like me, it’s not anywhere you’re going to want to revisit any time soon.
