Attribution: Jorge Simonet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Meat of the Matter: Review of Okja
By Geoff Carter
There are some films that evoke a keen sense of conscience or guilt in the audience—films that make us feel remorseful, guilty, or maybe even responsible. Documentaries like Sicko, Bowling for Columbine, Night and Fog, White Helmets, or Harvest of Shame can elicit pity, shame, or even anger in an audience. But this sort of outrage is not reserved for documentaries, but can also be seen in even the most fantastic or surrealistic genres of feature film, like Brazil, which brings the audience face-to-face with the Kafkaesque horrors of bureaucratic indifference and the collateral human damage it causes.
Babe, the fable of a young talking pig who strives to become a sheepdog—really, forces the audience to consider the value of a life—particularly a life that might end up on the dinner table. The roles of the vagaries of fate, personal choice, courage, and compassion figure into the tale of this little pig that could.
Another film, Okja—about a much bigger pig, examines many of the same issues while also addressing the ethics of the meatpacking industry, animal rights groups, and carnivorous lifestyle. Written and directed by Bong Joon-ho, the man who brought us the Academy Award winner Parasite, this film explores issues of genetic engineering, animal rights, unregulated marketing, and rampant avarice with quirky and unexpected plot twists into the murkiest moral territory—into dead ends where no one is right.
Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), self-proclaimed “environmentalist”, and heir and CEO to the Mirando Corporation, a food producing company, declares that the company has bred a “super pig” and then ten specimens will be sent to farms all the world. She states that in ten years’ time, the winning super pig will be chosen and flown to New York City to be celebrated—and slaughtered.
Ten years later, Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), a young girl living on a secluded Korean mountain farm, is tasked with tending Okja, one of the super pigs, with whom she has grown very close. Okja shows what seems to be a remarkable amount of intelligence, character, courage, and amiability. At one point, she prevents Mija from falling off a cliff, saving her life.
Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal), zoologist and Mirando Corporation representative, comes to inspect Okja, proclaims her to be the best of the genetically altered super pigs, and announces he will be taking Okja away to New York City. He and his entourage, including Okja, leave while Mija is away. Discovering her friend has been taken away, Mija is determined to leave and bring her back. Her grandfather attempts to console her with a golden figurine of a pig which he bought with the money he saved buy Okja back from Mirando. Mija takes the pig and leaves abruptly, following Wilcox to Seoul, determined to track down and retrieve her friend. Seeing Okja being abused and loaded onto a truck, Mija tracks her down, but the two of them are intercepted by the Animal Liberation Front, an animal rights group also determined to save Okja.
During a frenetic chase throughout the city, Okay and Mija escape, but are eventually rescued by the ALF. J (Paul Dano) the leader of the group, tells Mija their plan to plant a video camera on Okja to record abuses in the Mirando processing plant. He then asks Mija what she would like them to do with her and Okja—to go ahead with the plan or send them home. Mija immediately says she wants them both to go back to the mountains.
J asks K (Steven Yeun), another ALF operative, to translate Mija’s answer. K lies to J, telling him Mija wants to go ahead with the plan. Okja is recaptured and, after tissue (tasting) samples are taken from her, she is forcibly bred with another super pig. After J discovers K’s duplicity, he beats him up and them expels him from the ALF.
As a PR stunt to minimize damaging publicity to the Mirando Corporation, Lucy has Mija transported to New York for a heart-warming reunion with her friend, but Okja, traumatized from her experience, attacks Mija, who finally succeeds in calming her friend down. Amidst the firestorm of public criticism, Lucy steps down and is replaced by her twin sister Nancy (Tilda Swinton) who opens the super pig slaughterhouse for full operation. Okja is transported there.
J and Mija go to the processing plant, determined to find Okja, and find her on the verge of being killed. Nancy arrives and ignoring Mija’s pleas, orders the slaughter to go ahead. Mija then shows her the golden pig her grandfather had given her and offers it in exchange for Okja’s life. Nancy accepts and she and Okja are allowed to leave. J, however, is arrested.
On their way out, past the yards where hundreds of the super pigs are being herded into the slaughterhouse, a pair of them push their baby through the fence for Okja to protect. She smuggles the piglet out in her mouth and the three go to the mountains and live in peace.
While on the surface, this might seem to be the simple sentimental story of a young girl saving her best friend, but Joon-ho has turned this narrative into an examination of the economic and political forces and their dehumanizing effects on society. Okja is an animal, to be sure, but she is intelligent, compassionate, courageous, loyal, and loving—qualities that many of the human characters in this story lack. She does not deserve to be slaughtered and eaten. Which of course raises the bigger (and the specter of guilt among the omnivores among us) about the ethics of eating meat.
In the beginning sequence, as Lucy is unveiling the company plan for raising the genetically engineered super pigs, she proclaims herself an “environmentalist” who will be helping the world environment by breeding the super pig—sheer and unadulterated mendacity and hypocrisies. And behind the scenes, the ruthless boardroom politics at Mirando are portrayed to be as deadly as the slaughterhouses they oversee.
On another level, the well-intentioned ALF leader J, usually soft-spoken and kindly, becomes as violent as the people he opposes while disciplining and expelling fellow member K, who has taken advantage of Okja and Mija to get into J’s good graces. On this level, neither J nor K are better than Lucy or her more ruthless sister Nancy.
Dr. Wilcox is a somewhat overwrought parody of a celebrity zoologist—a la the late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, but only as an extreme parody of the naturalist. Gyllenhall’s Wilcox is a bitter man, fool whose celebrity has lost its luster, a scientist who has forsaken his calling as a biologist. He has sold out to the Mirando Corporation, selling his reputation and his soul for a few bucks. Ahn So-hun is superb as Mija. Her stalwart loyalty and dedication to Okja is believable and heart-warming. As always, Tilda Swinton is a marvel of eccentricities. Her Lucy is a hard-wired bundle of neurotic anxieties while her depiction of Nancy, her cruel twin, is chillingly warped.
Like the rest of Joon-ho’s work, Okja provides more than a few interesting twists along the way. His direction is always compelling and succinct. Here, whether he is orchestrating a breathless chase scene through the subways of Seoul or following J and Mija’s desperate search for Okja through the horrors of the slaughterhouse or depicting the idyllic lives of the two friends in the mountains of South Korea, his touch for conveying the sensibilities of the story is dead-on.
Okja is a great movie. It not only raises questions concerning the ethics of eating meat, but also focuses on the dehumanizing and destructive effects of corporate greed on its victims and its own adherents. Like Babe, it forces us to recognize the commonalities between ourselves and the animals—or the human beings—we permit ourselves to victimize.
We could all be better people, kinder to our fellow creatures, but, unlike Okja and Mija, we are too easily distracted by gold, glitter, and the smell of bacon.