Beautifully crafted tale of a little girl in South Korea who has been with a specially created, slow growing, eventually very large pig, Okja, for ten years, just about her whole life. They live in the mountains alone with her father and Okja is her constant companion with an unbreakable bond. This idyllic life cannot go on as, unknown to her, Okja has been bred and raised for food and those who actually own her, plus many more, have come to claim her. The rest is sort of an adventure of the little girl trying to get Okja back from New York to her beloved mountains against seemingly insurmountable odds. It's a Disney tale at heart with some ugly and unpleasant scenes involving the realities of raising stock. The scenes of the girl with Okja alone are amazingly well filmed. Seo-hyun Ahn as the girl gives a fine, honest performance, but there are much bigger names in this such as Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and Giancarlo Esposito who provide lesser performances. Swinton & Gyllenhaal have obviously been asked to play way over the top and both are more annoying than anything else. Dano has little to do but be sweet and sincere and Esposito is well, Esposito. The whole thing is a mixed bag. It's realistic, it's unrealistic, it's sweet, it's ugly. The extremely imaginative Bong Joon Ho filmed this in between Snowpiercer and Parasite, both much better films, but all three do exhibit his creativity, originality, versatility and talent. However, I don't know what audience he was aiming for with this. It's seems like a children's film made for adults or something like that?!
Review of Okja
