WHAT is it with films about pigs? They always leave you an emotional wreck at the end of them.
I’m looking at you, Babe and Charlotte’s Web.
Netflix’s newest film Okja successfully follows this trend of films about pigs.
The film opens in 2007, Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) has taken over multinational food company Mirando, think a fictional version of Monsanto. At a press conference, the bubbly CEO announces the company has created a “Super Pig” and will be giving 10 super piglets to farmers around the world to raise, as part of a competition.
Cut forward 10 years and we meet Mija (played by 13-year-old Ahn Seo-hyun), a young farm girl living in the mountains of Korea with her grandfather. They had received a super pig called Okja a decade before, and now the competition was coming to an end.
As the competition concludes, Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal), a crazy zoologist and TV personality, announces Okja has won the best super pig competition and is going to New York.
When Mija realises Okja is leaving her, she follows the pig to Seoul and ultimately to the United States.
Where the film really works is in its strong mix of genres. At times it feels like a modern fairytale, then a crime drama and a heist. Thematically, is it a comedy? Is it a drama? What starts off as quite a comedic film, the last 20% or so becomes really quite horrific. This jump between genres and styles works, the film flows beautifully and I never wanted to turn it off.
The meeting of cultures in the film also plays to its advantage.
The clash between modern Korean cinema and Hollywood creates an exciting atmosphere that feels very fresh.
Okja is a must-see film. It challenges audiences’ perceptions on our production chain of meat. It challenges the perception of seeing animals, living breathing creatures, as a commodity to be sold and profited from. It brings certain practices such as caged farming into question. And most of all it does it in both a funny and highly emotional way.
Okja is funny, sad, cute, exciting, thought-provoking, depressing, hopeful and it is by far one of the best films of the year, thus far.
Okja is now streaming on Netflix.
This review originally appeared in the South Burnett Times.