Okja - Review

Bong Joon-Ho's Okja starts in typically biting, off-the-wall style: the gloriously creepy Nancy Mirando - played by Tilda Swinton with braces and shocking white hair - swans about a stage spouting corporate platitudes ("core values") as she is cheered on by hordes of adoring spectators. Before long, Mirando tells us "We've successfully produced 26 miracle piglets by non-forced, natural mating". We soon learn that these piglets will be sent to 26 farmers around the world to be reared, becoming the ancestors of a new breed of super pig. Wonderful, this is all sounds like reasonably pleasant, ethical stuff.

Hop forward ten years and we are with one of the aforementioned super pigs, bumbling its way through the Korean countryside with Mija, the daughter of one of the 26 farmers. Here, the seamlessness with which the CGI super pig Okja - a distinctly cuddly creature which would be best described as some sort of a hippo-pig hybrid - is rendered as a part of its environment is remarkable. Frolicking amidst the verdant hues of the forest, captured gorgeously by cinematographer Darius Khondji, we feel Okja's every step. To put it simply, I was convinced of there being a large pig type creature there with Mija.  

Throughout the film, this idyllic depiction of Okja's home is juxtaposed with the grim, invasive corporate world of the Mirando corporation. This is where the satire is really cranked up. Firstly, we have some seriously turned up to 11 performances which are intermittently successful: Jake Gyllenhaal is the moustache faced, wildlife TV presenter Johnny Wilcox who is constantly showing an uncomfortable amount of thigh; Tilda Swinton is back in a Hail, Caesar!-esque role, playing the Mirando sisters; and Paul Dano plays Jay, the head of the somewhat cultish ALF (Animal Liberation Front), doing something similar to the There Will Be Blood thing. These slightly hit-and-miss performances are, importantly, backed up by an entertainingly irreverent Jon Ronson script ("all edible, except the squeal") which when combined, injects things with a healthy dose of fairly unforgiving political commentary. 

As is often the case with Bong Joon-Ho, and Korean cinema in general, Okja is tonally all-over-the-place. This isn't something I necessarily have a problem with (I love the offbeat comedy in Memories of Murder for example), but here I wasn't too fond of the freewheeling style that, for me, resulted in a lack of focus. Regardless, Okja has plenty to admire; combining Spielbergian creature feature wonder and politically charged satire, Bong achieves a rambling yet potent cacophony of a film that despite not quite adding up, is worth a watch.