Chris here. Have you caught up to Okja on Netflix yet, readers?
The Cannes competition title arrived on the streaming platform this week (and a tiny sampling of theatres), becoming one of its boldest and best pieces of original programming. Bong Joon-ho's satire of the factory farming industry and consumer culture is a stunning blend of tones and ideas, from absurd comedy to tense thriller to heartwarming fable. At its heart, it is truly about a girl and her pet.
Okja is quite a feast for audiences, bursting with delights both unexpected and well-anticipated. The film has naturally proven somewhat divisive already, as anything so go-for-broke typically can be. But let's grant some hosannas for a film of many high points...
Diversity, Diversity, Diversity
See, Hollywood, it is simply not so difficult to have diversity in your casting. Our hero is a young Korean girl, and there are more than white faces in both the nefarious Mirando Corporation and the rebellious Animal Liberation Front. This broad spectrum of casting helps reinforce the film’s complex global themes in a way you wish more films would match.
Your sci-fi satire need not be so dark
Haven’t we all grown tired of brooding science fiction dystopia tales, especially when we are living in one? Even Bong Joon-ho himself fell somewhat prey to it with Snowpiercer. Somehow Okja manages to be uplifting despite being about how awful our world has become, a sunnily disposed film that still doesn’t shy away from atrocity.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s gonzo host
This is already a divisive performance for all of its wacko mannerisms and I’m certainly within the “pro” camp on what Gyllenhaal is doing here (that squeaky voice!), though I would offer that it doesn’t help his case that the movie itself treats him like a distraction. While some of his more out there work like and Nightcrawler this has felt more singular, here he proves game to submit to a director’s vision.
Endlessly Great Set Design
The film is bursting at every corner of its globe-trotting aesthetic with lush locales, chilly capitalism, and grungy industrialism. Miraculously the disparate tones and textures are make for a cohesive whole under Ha-jun Lee and Kevin Thompson’s art direction, and always a vessel for the film’s satire. Let’s get our own art direction observer Daniel Walber on this, stat.
Tilda Twins
Any film where you get one Tilda Swinton is already an embarrassment of riches, but a symphonic twosome? Here she gets to play both sides of a capitalistic coin - unfeeling overlord and overzealous marketing maven - for what we knew would be another treat. Which of her past roles would you most want to see its opposing twin?
“Translations Are Sacred”
As covered brilliantly by Vice and Vulture, the film uses language and cultural disparities to further the plot. One of the things that makes Joon-ho’s worlds so vast and intriguing is that he has an eye on the entire world and not filtered through the lens of any one nation or locale. Part of what makes Okja so intellectually wide is that it can hold more global ideas in its mind at once than its anti-meat industry polemic.
Okja, herself
A major shout out to the creature design here, for our massive bovine pal looks original and imaginative, and often quite real. Rather than cutesifying her to adorable effect, Okja looks and acts like an animal and not the cartoon character you might expect from its tender narrative. And she still remains pretty cuddly... poop and farts aside.
Netflix
It’s incredibly difficult to imagine this film having the scale, polish, and guts that it does without the kind of financial backing that the streaming service was able to provide. Thankfully, Netflix does exist so that Okja can exist exactly as it does without compromise, even if it only blurs the lines between cinema and television. However, everyone who put themselves on the pro-Netflix side of the often reductive debate: you damn well better watch things like Okja to prove your thesis.
New star Ahn Seo-hyun
Wonder Woman isn’t the only kick-ass female hero we get this summer: Seo-hyun’s Mija is by turns caring and defiant, brave beyond her years but purely still a child. The young actress is formiddable in Mija’s determination and dryly funny when she is unimpressed by truly any adult’s posturing. Already she could own an action franchise with the best of them.
Bong Joon-ho
Whether you love Okja or not, it is impossible to deny that the film is a work of immense creative vision. The auteur has delivered us a satire of vast imagination, something of our times that can heal our times. Is there any other director working in science fiction today with this much originality or mischievous wit or overriding sense of hope? Still with all those creative risks, his deft balance of tones makes this film one bravura piece of filmmaking.
What did you think of Okja?