“They need to taste fucking good” – Okja in the era of fast food films

2017
Writers: Jon Ronson, Bong Joon-Ho
Director: Bong Joon-Ho

I’ve just gotten back from a screening of Okja at Curzon Soho. It’s a South Korean/American production that’s being distributed by Netflix, appearing today on their website and only a few cinemas for a few days at most. It’s also an entirely eccentric, baffling and bizarre film which left me thrilled, delighted, disturbed and exhilarated in frankly equal measure. It’s one of those films which you can hardly believe got made, and made as beautifully as it was, and which frankly you’re glad for its existence, if only for the joy of watching something so darn strange. But that is what is to be expected from director Bong Joon-Ho, the bold visionary behind Memories of Murder, The Host, and Snowpiercer, one of my favourite films from the last few years.

Tilda Swinton is Lucy Mirando, the new CEO of an agricultural corporation with a damaged reputation following the tenure of her controversial father. She announces the company has discovered a new breed of superpig, and will send 26 piglets to different farmers around the world to see which one will raise the biggest pig. 10 years later, Mija (Ahn Seo-Hyun) lives on an isolated Korean mountain farm with her grandfather (Byun Hee-Bong) and her superpig Okja. One day, slightly deranged TV wildlife expert and Mirando corp spokesman Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal) arrives and declares Okja will be taken away to New York for the competition announcement. Mija tracks them down to Seoul, where she becomes involved with an extreme animal rights activist group called the Animal Liberation Front, who are determined to expose Mirando’s unethical practices.

Over two hours, Okja is a hell of a busy film. It takes a great number of risks and just about gets away with them. First and foremost, it’s a playful, almost cartoonish creature feature, an ode to family and friendship in the guise of a girl and her superpig. So much of this rests on the lead performance of Ahn who, often just through the subtlest gestures, is able to convey the depth of her relationship with Okja, which is only quickly introduced before the plot comes trampling into action. This also gives the film some semblance of an emotional core. Despite all the commotion, at its heart this is a surprisingly simple adventure story, albeit one that takes a lot of strange twists and misdirections along the way. An all-out slapstick chase scene through central Seoul has to be one of the most gleefully enjoyable things I’ve watched this year, but it’s one that does stand out as feeling a little out of place with the rest of the film – no more than a blistering setpiece for the director to flex his muscles with.

That’s because, secondly, Okja is a blistering satire of … all sorts of things really. The glitzy garish graphics at the very start of the film for Mirando’s new campaign hammer clear the film’s target of multinationals harnessing the artsy, quirky route to market dubious claims to millennial audiences – ‘homegrown’, ‘organic’, ‘ethical’, etc. As with many films on the edge of Hollywood, big business is the enemy, and Jon Ronson’s deliciously barbed script makes easy work in tearing apart the ridiculousness of their attempts to appear cool – from Swinton’s Mirando anxiously fearing how news footage of her security manhandling a young girl will affect stock prices, to the ridiculousness of their New York parade to market new meat.

But Ronson’s script takes pot shots at all number of other, sometimes easy, targets. Subtle it ain’t.O From the new wave crypto-animal lovers of the Animal Liberation Front, so vegan and anti-production that they debate the ethicacy of eating tomatoes, to the narcissism of society today, with numerous characters whipping  out inopportune selfie sticks, and Mirando’s range of practical work fashions. Beyond Mija and her grandfather, almost every character is an exaggerated caricature, none more so than Gyllenhaal’s hammy and quite extraordinary, almost drunken, performance as Johnny Wilcox – a past-his-prime squeaky-voiced TV nature presenter (and another narcissist) who has sold his soul to the Mirando corporation.

But these broad strokes have the desired effect – they are fiendishly funny. And so that’s why the film’s third major feature – its critique of global meat production and consumption – feels so deliberately jarring. The sudden shift to some genuinely troubling scenes depicting this affected me just as it was supposed to, and I really respect that the filmmakers and studio were brave enough to stick to their guns and include it. Okja could easily have been a kid-friendly adventure film, but these scenes push the film into new territory. It wouldn’t surprise me if this film does turn some viewers off meat-eating, though Okja does well to avoid turning into a lecture on the evils of the industriousness of the meat industry.

Each of these major features of Okja work tremendously well in themselves. It does mean that with Okja’s blistering pace, there are wild shifts in tone that pull the film in all manner of directions, and it has oh so many targets it wants to keep in its scope. Not to say there isn’t much to love and admire, from Bong’s impeccable directorial eye, to the beautiful production design, but this film is lacking some of the laser-sharp focus of something like Snowpiercer.

One quick point before I go – this is the film Netflix film production I’ve seen. It was actually quite odd seeing their logo pop up on the big screen. Anyone who kept up with Cannes this year will have been well aware of the debate raging over this film’s inclusion, given that strict laws in France will prevent it from ever being screened in cinemas. This is a film that very much deserves to be seen on a big screen (the fantastic cinematography by Darius Khondji and the astonishing CGI Okja herself are worth seeing properly) and for someone like me who congregates regularly at the church of the cinema, it seems a shame that most who see this film will simply watch it at home.

On the other hand, you have to give major props to Netflix. Offering total creative control, including allowing the more controversial slaughterhouse scenes, it’s no surprise Bong Joon-Ho was drawn to them (especially considering the infamous trouble he had with Harvey Weinstein over the editing of Snowpiercer). Also, as a $50 million movie, Okja is the sort of film which rarely exists today – the mid budget feature. When studios are only willing to either pump money into major tentpole franchises, or hedge small bets on low budget indies, there is something lacking these days that bigger budget creative films like this can offer.

Certain Women (2016)

Writer/Director: Kelly Reichardt

I’ve not actually seen a Kelly Reichardt film properly through, so I suppose this was my first genuine introduction. I have been aware of her approach which makes her unique even within the artier circles of cinema today: her dislike of neat endings and conventional plotting; the immersion of often side-lined characters within vast landscapes, and the stories of marginalised women presented without any explicit theme.

Certain Women, which won Best Film at the London Film Festival, is a triptych of three women living in Montana, and the little things that occur to them over a short period. Laura Dern is a lawyer dealing with an unstable client, Michelle Williams plays a mother whose lofty intentions in building a new house is distracting her from the increasing distance between her and her family, and Lily Gladstone steals the show as a lonely ranch-hand who falls for Kristen Stewart’s night school teacher.

Each story unfolds gradually and quietly, actively foregoing anything majorly dramatic or any sort of conflict. The unassuming ordinariness of these lives, often filmed in uncomplicated medium close ups, or amongst wide shots of the vast still landscapes, is given added expression by the actors who fill the naturalness of their conversations with a genuine sense of the lived-in, the rugged realness of women simply working and surviving.

Very often it’s the little gestures, or the moments left unspoken, especially between Gladstone and Stewart, that breath life into this film. At first I found the seeming emptiness and almost aimlessness of these lives depressing, and I left the screen with an almost gnawing sense of feeling lost. I think partly it was because I had to adjust myself to Reichardt’s more casual rhythms, but I later realised that perhaps that was intended – Reichardt empathetically exploring the extent of women’s lives in midstate America, where many struggle to find meaning, and many more struggle simply to get by.