Okja

Bong Joon Ho's Okja filled me with ambivalence. I have respect for Bong's craft, but felt this was little more than a live action remake of a Miyazaki film: Spirited Away with My Genetically Altered Neighbor Totoro. Miyazaki's films are critiques of the elite as is Bong's previous feature, Snowpiercer. Tilda Swinton is on hand in Okja, as in Snowpiercer, to reprise her parody of Mrs. Thatcher, albeit in American guise this time. 

She is excellent, performing with a knowing bravura that is choice ham and zesty burlesque. Bong also gets nice performances from Paul Dano and Hee-Bong Byun, but such interesting performers as Giancarlo Esposito and Shirley Henderson are left with little to do. Jake Gyllenhaal is deplorably giddy and giggly, making one think that Bong left his thesps to their own devices. 

Okja is beautifully designed, shot, and costumed film that suffers from a second rate premise. We know that our young heroine will rescue her genetically modified porcine friend, but when she does, Okja's fellow prisoners in the giant slaughterhouse are left to their fate. Okja frolics with her young friend in a verdant natural setting and while this will surely please young viewers, their elders would be justified in viewing it as a sop. 

Bong cannot reconcile the ambivalent nature of this film: one half gentle children's fantasy, the other half a dystopian nightmare that features slaughterhouse footage and genetic pig on genetic pig rape. Black comedy seems to be Bong's forte, but he cannot quite reconcile with Okja's sap. I would rate this slightly above The Host, but below Snowpiercer, much less Memories of Murder or Mother. (6/24/22)