Okja

As Okja unfolded I kept thinking of the comics I read in my youth. American comics were always bigger than superheroes with plenty of crime, autobiography and horror out there to please genre fans. 

This reminded me of manga. That’s not a perfect analogy as there are all kinds of comics from Japan in an infinite number of styles. But there are sensibilities that tend come from particulars parts of the world given their creators and audiences. England and France tend toward strange science fiction and fantasy. The manga I drifted toward was either giant robots or samurai epics

But Okja has that Manga sensibility with their slice of life and childhood adventure work. It’s in the rhythm of it, the colors and the outlandish characters. 

Director and writer Bong Joon-ho is joined by Jon Ronson to tell a story about a mountain girl, Mika (Ahn Seo-hyun) who raises and loves a superpig. 

The pig is bound for a slaughterhouse but Mika won’t accept that and a high adventure ensues as she tries to rescue her friend. 

It’s a wild, scary and ridiculous story. Okja is the kind of movie that lets Tilda Swinton play both her familiar pathetic insecure corporate ceo and, later, she gets to be pure capitalist evil. 

Paul Dano is a very calm animal rights terrorist who might be lying to himself about his commitment to nonviolence. 

And Jake Gyllenhaal is a tv personality / mad scientist in a role that reminded me of Nic Cage at his wildest. One more scene with him in this flick would have been too much but he takes every chance he gets to drive the acting to an 11. 

Bong Joon-ho long ago earned his stripes as a director. I love telling the kids that I watched his first breakthrough movie, Memories of Murder, on DVD 20 years ago. 

And his adaptation of an actual manga, Snowpiercer, is another fave. 

There was a lot to like here but what I enjoyed the most was how sly this movie is. Watch how the animal rights activists introduce themselves. 

And when all his corporate characters need to watch something on a computer screen Bong recreates the famous Pete Souza photograph of the White House situation room from the night special forces took down Osama Bin Laden. 

A lesser director would have really drawn attention to it. But Bong does it and moves on. If you caught it you will cackle. But if you blink you might miss it. 

And he also uses his powers to move you. In one scene a group of characters are leaving a building. As they do we can hear what’s happening behind them again and again and again. 

Bong’s work fell off the map for me until he resurfaced in America with the brilliant Parasite and rightfully won an Oscar for best picture. That left this, Mother and The Host in a blind spot for me.

I probably need to quit procrastinating. Everything this guy makes is somewhere close to perfect.