taehyungsfatnose
Beautiful vegetarian propaganda.
A grand fantasy adventure that is fantastically entertaining and beautiful. Okja is a charming, funny and thought-provoking family film which, however, is not directly suitable for the youngest, but will amuse many others.
The fact that the Netflix-produced film Okja competed in Cannes raised a few eyebrows among the traditionalists. However, you have to think outside the box when you turn 70, and that's what the festival did in 2017.
The South Korean Bong Joon Ho, the man behind films like The Host and Snowpiercer, has written and directed this cute and visually spectacular fairy tale, with very dark tones between the lines.
The film is not easy to categorize as within its framework there is about as much comedy and farce as deep-seated drama and action. It is precisely this that gives the film extra points for innovative thinking, but at the same time risks making it somewhat difficult to grasp for parts of the audience, and above all it becomes difficult to say who its intended target group actually is.
The film is a kind of platonic love story between a girl and her pet.
Okja is one of all genetically engineered superpigs larger than a hippopotamus and has grown up with Mija, a little girl who lives up in the Korean mountains with her grandfather. Mija and Okja are best friends and really stick together through thick and thin. One day, however, everything changes when the Mirando Corporation, which once created Okja to become cheap food for the people, comes to bring her "home". But Mija is not one to give up on her friend so easily and encouraged by an animal rights group, she travels to the other side of the globe to save her life partner.
Essentially, then, the film is about unlikely but oh-so-strong friendship and takes place with the corrupt and sleazy (on more than one level) meat industry as a background. At the same time, the film conveys important messages about how the resources on earth should be distributed and urges us consumers to think. This is unusual in a film for younger people but all the more important for us all to take part.
A pale and easygoing Tilda Swinton plays the cool and calculating Lucy Mirando who is the CEO of the heartless company intent on mass producing cheap meat. And of course she is perfect in the role. Her colleague, the eccentric zoologist Dr. Johnny Wilcox is played by an energetic Jake Gyllenhaal who is quite funny, although perhaps not as convincing. Admittedly, it's a lot of fun to see him doing slapstick and rampaging around like I've never seen him do before, but it's grossly overplayed and not always justified. To some extent, it is certainly forgivable to stretch the expressions, as both his and Tilda Swinton's characters are caricatures, although it feels like Jake Gyllenhaal is sometimes almost having a little too much fun himself, at the expense of a lot of credibility.
Other roles include the always-watchable Paul Dano, Steven Yeun and Lily Collins. Young talent Ahn Seo-Hyun plays Mija and succeeds in an unexpectedly convincing way in creating a relationship with a giant animal that is mostly computer-animated.
Okja is a different and very nice film that absolutely deserves its audience. It's a bit uneven between turns and I sometimes feel that the humor should have been turned up a bit, only to suddenly feel that it could have been toned down. This ambivalence is a little disruptive to the overall experience and I would have liked Bong Joon Ho to decide to take it either way.
In the end, despite some flaws, this is a very lovely and heartwarming film that I undoubtedly enjoy very much.
The fact that the Netflix-produced film Okja competed in Cannes raised a few eyebrows among the traditionalists. However, you have to think outside the box when you turn 70, and that's what the festival did in 2017.
The South Korean Bong Joon Ho, the man behind films like The Host and Snowpiercer, has written and directed this cute and visually spectacular fairy tale, with very dark tones between the lines.
The film is not easy to categorize as within its framework there is about as much comedy and farce as deep-seated drama and action. It is precisely this that gives the film extra points for innovative thinking, but at the same time risks making it somewhat difficult to grasp for parts of the audience, and above all it becomes difficult to say who its intended target group actually is.
The film is a kind of platonic love story between a girl and her pet.
Okja is one of all genetically engineered superpigs larger than a hippopotamus and has grown up with Mija, a little girl who lives up in the Korean mountains with her grandfather. Mija and Okja are best friends and really stick together through thick and thin. One day, however, everything changes when the Mirando Corporation, which once created Okja to become cheap food for the people, comes to bring her "home". But Mija is not one to give up on her friend so easily and encouraged by an animal rights group, she travels to the other side of the globe to save her life partner.
Essentially, then, the film is about unlikely but oh-so-strong friendship and takes place with the corrupt and sleazy (on more than one level) meat industry as a background. At the same time, the film conveys important messages about how the resources on earth should be distributed and urges us consumers to think. This is unusual in a film for younger people but all the more important for us all to take part.
A pale and easygoing Tilda Swinton plays the cool and calculating Lucy Mirando who is the CEO of the heartless company intent on mass producing cheap meat. And of course she is perfect in the role. Her colleague, the eccentric zoologist Dr. Johnny Wilcox is played by an energetic Jake Gyllenhaal who is quite funny, although perhaps not as convincing. Admittedly, it's a lot of fun to see him doing slapstick and rampaging around like I've never seen him do before, but it's grossly overplayed and not always justified. To some extent, it is certainly forgivable to stretch the expressions, as both his and Tilda Swinton's characters are caricatures, although it feels like Jake Gyllenhaal is sometimes almost having a little too much fun himself, at the expense of a lot of credibility.
Other roles include the always-watchable Paul Dano, Steven Yeun and Lily Collins. Young talent Ahn Seo-Hyun plays Mija and succeeds in an unexpectedly convincing way in creating a relationship with a giant animal that is mostly computer-animated.
Okja is a different and very nice film that absolutely deserves its audience. It's a bit uneven between turns and I sometimes feel that the humor should have been turned up a bit, only to suddenly feel that it could have been toned down. This ambivalence is a little disruptive to the overall experience and I would have liked Bong Joon Ho to decide to take it either way.
In the end, despite some flaws, this is a very lovely and heartwarming film that I undoubtedly enjoy very much.
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