Okja, by South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, can be compared to a baby chimpanzee which grows up in two hours. At the start it is cute and you feel at ease letting it play with your children. But if you allow it to stay with them in those two hours it will cause some very shocking moments. In this case the movie itself isn’t about a primate, but about a specially bred superpig which could mean a lot of profit for a big multinational company.
The story is about Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) and the strong bond she has with her “pig”, which she has had since it was little. The two are inseparable and live together with Mija’s grandfather, far away from the city in South Korea. The peacefulness of th countryside is interrupted though when Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal) show up, a wild TV-personality who acts a bit like Steve Irwin. He’s there to take a look at the superpig. Okja turns out to be the best specimen of this breed en is taken away from Mija. She’s hurt and decides to find Okja and take her back home. Unexpectedly she’s helped with her mission by a mysterious group, which is led by Jay (Paul Dano), who is fighting the powerful Mirando corporation and its CEO Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton).
Although this movie initially seems to be a family film, it really isn’t suitable for young children. I watched it with two teenagers and one of them felt so uncomfortable during one dark moment in the film dat she decided to stop watching. But to me it is exactly that strong contrast between innocence at the start set against very confrontational moments which makes this movie have such a strong impact and makes you think. It’s a movie about an animal which doesn’t exist, but it is easy to make the link to the current food-producing industry.
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