Phones serve as a powerful mediator of their relationship. Mirando, meanwhile, is a more straightforward manifestation of the brutal capitalism and consumerism espoused by the United States. It tells the story of a pig-like creature who is snatched from its young owner, Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), by Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), the head of a nefarious corporation. Devastated, Mija goes to Seoul to find Okja, where she sees her being loaded onto a truck. "I'm seeing more of my friends move away from red meat due to health and environmental issues . As Mija and Okja are escorted away, a pair of super pigs push their newborn to Okja to hide it and take it away. Her grandfather gives Mija a gold pig, explaining he saved up to replace Okja when she was taken away. However, Okja is more appropriate for elementary age students. The film begins in 2007 in New York, when Lucy Mirando, an industrialist masquerading as an environmentalist takes over her duties as CEO for Mirando Corporation succeeding her eventhemore twin evil sister, Nancy, and as part of the continued PR exercise, announces to the media that the company under her leadership would move away from the tyrannous ways of the erstwhile CEOs and look to newer core values of humanity and environmental consciousness. Some of the jokes and references in Okja are more resonant with American viewers, while others resonate with Korean viewers and one specific joke in the film translates only for those who speak both Korean and English. The new Netflix movie Okja feels like an impossible mashup, as if Hayao Mayazaki, John Carpenter, and a contemporary comedy director like Paul Feig all teamed up to make a . The connection with the color Red seems to suggest that those named Okja show this desire for adventure and always appear to be full of vitality. Their star super pig, which is why weve made this. To their credit, the moviemakers signal right away that this isn't a film that adults can use as an electronic babysitter. MIja and Jay try to escape with Okja but fail and are rescued by a reformed K, while Okja is recaptured and sent to the Mirando labs with hundreds of other super pigs, where Nancy commands to have full time slaughterhouse operations for the super pigs as she plans to sell them and scraps Lucys program entirely, believing that the public will buy it anyway if its cheap. Without getting into too many plot specifics right off the bat, it should be said that Bong and his co-writer, Jon Ronsona journalist, filmmaker and social critic who wrote The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry and So You've Been Publicly Shamedhave made a film that lots of little kids will want to see but that not too many will be able to handle. No one takes her seriously when she makes the request. "I wanted Okja to be cute. Its point-of-view won't be to everyone's liking (I can see Fox News Channel getting a solid week's worth of programming from the fact that Netflix helped bankroll a blockbuster anti-meat picture). She said, I wanna take Okja back to the mountains. I lied. Despite all the trauma and devastation Mija and Okja have experienced, though, the ending is hopeful. And second, Okja's wackiness buys it enough goodwill to allow for some obvious (but charming), heavy-handed (but genuine) metaphors down the road. Okja is recaptured and the ALF members are arrested, except for Mija and Jay, who are rescued by K. Nancy, Lucys twin sister, reassumes the position of CEO and starts full-time operations at their slaughterhouse. My name is K.], Mija: . "[28], "Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Bong-Joon Ho & 'Twin Peaks' Lead 2017 Cannes Film Festival Line Up", "Netflix Backs Bong Joon-ho's 'Okja' with $50 Million", "2017 Cannes Film Festival Announces Lineup: Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, 'Twin Peaks' and More", "Bong Joon-ho, Netflix and Darius Khondji join forces for Okja", http://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/30/okja-jon-ronson-veganism-heroism-corporate-harm-626829.html, "Okja Begins Filming with Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal", "Bong Joon Ho's Okja Starts Filming with Tilda Swinton", "The Predator, Okja, Death Note Filming Dates Revealed", "Okja: exclusive images from Netflix's 2017 thriller starring Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal - NME", "Cannes Lineup: Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, Noah Baumbach, 'Twin Peaks', "Cannes Apologizes For 'Okja' Screening Technical Glitches", "Cannes: Netflix's controversial 'Okja' gets booed for technical snafu", "Netflix's 'Okja' Booed at First Press Screening in Cannes", "Cannes apologises after technical problems and booing disrupts Netflix film Okja", "Cannes: Netflix's 'Okja' Premiere Gets Four-Minute Standing Ovation After Press Screening Snafu", "First Teaser for Bong Joon-ho's Okja, Coming to Netflix", "Every Netflix Movie in the Criterion Collection", "The 10 Most Influential Films of the Decade (and 20 Other Favorites)", "Review: In 'Okja,' a Girl and Her Pig Take on the Food Industrial Complex", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Okja&oldid=1138372563, Swinton also plays Nancy Mirando, Lucy's twin sister, the cruel former CEO of the Mirando Corporation, This page was last edited on 9 February 2023, at 09:14. I see you, Bong. Bong looked to a variety of real animals for inspiration. The soundtrack of pop tunes is charming as well, especially when it scores a slow-motion sequence to John Denver's "Annie's Song" (for the second time this year, oddly; the other time was in "Free Fire"). Ks introduction makes his relationship with Korean clear: Dialogue is in Korean. Okja (2017) is the brainchild of Bong Joon-ho, the South Korean writer-director of Parasite, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 2019.He is also the creator of the cult classic monster movie The Host (2006) and the steampunk dystopian train ride Snowpiercer (2013). Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as a hypocritical nature TV celeb is the only flat-out casting disaster. Okja is discovered by Mija just in time as he is being pushed up a ramp for slaughter, and shows the Mirando employee a picture from her childhood with baby Okja, appealing to his humanity. Hollywood may only now be opening its doors to South Korean cinema, but the door has always been open in the other direction. Nancy: Well, whats the hiccup? It looks exactly like the black box on her ear, right? Rescue Okja, replace the black box, and let Mirando retake Okja. The pigs were presented to the media as a "discovery" even though they were devised in Mirando's labs. meaning it needs to increase production . The story unfolds with young Mija, a farm girl played by actress An Seo-huyn who lives in the lush mountains of South Korea with her grandfather and their beloved genetically-engineered pig, Okja (an old-fashioned South Korean name without a specific meaning). The film is unapologetically against the assembly line-style "harvesting" of animals for meat, and perhaps, on a very basic level, anti-meat, period. In this list, you'll find some of the most prominent symbols as well as learn about what each of them means. When he enrolled at Yonsei University as a sociology student, the pro-democracy movement was reaching its apex, culminating in violent protests often led by student activists. four-leaf clover-symbolizes good luck or fortune. "They'll eat it if it's cheap," snaps CEO Lucy Mirando in a telling scene after she's confronted with hesitations about public discomfort surrounding her organisation's meat products. [We tear down and take animals from, umm slaughterhouses and, um laboratories Thats why we also took Okja.]. . While one can definitely interpret this as an open ending,Joon-ho Bonghas not indicated any inclination towards making a sequel. Now while many would question my tall claim of putting Okjas ending in the same vein as the classic Schindlers List, allow me to explain. Bong's film is even tougher going, mainly because it steers clear of the "all's well that ends well" finale we expect. Nancy: Im flummoxed that security is so lax as to allow a bunch of hooligans to delay the production line for even a second. Symbols are tangible objects within a film that presents something greater than what they are. "Actually, it has no meaning. 7 . As the truck passes under a sequence of low bridges, Mundo nervously questions whether Kim even has a commercial drivers license. Ks story doesnt end there, though. Horrified, K admits that he mistranslated and tries to provide a justification, only to be harshly punished. As the movie progresses, Jay appears to realize the wrongfulness of his actions and to show remorse. His films are usually characterized by social themes and black humor. Okja is a lumbering, clumsy creature that looks like a cross between a hippopotamus and a hairless puppy the size of a Mack truck. The only difference between Mija and Oskar Schindler as protagonists is that Mija didnt fall to the ground wailing and repenting how she could have saved so many more from slaughter, because, well she is a little kid with a worldview of her own. Without K as an interpreter, Jay has to do the work of learning and using Korean. Starring: Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, An Seo-hyun. Frank: [picks up gold pig and dusts it off before handing it to Nancy]. Ojkas ending, even though complete in itself, leaves enough room for Joon-ho Bong or anybody else to take the story forward. As Mija and Okja walk away from the meat processing plant, a couple superpigs squeeze a tiny superpig baby through the fence. The tiny cages they're keeping the sick and crippled pigs in actually look bigger than the ones actual pigs are kept in. for only $16.05 $11/page. Nancy: Fuck off! An interpreter is already present in this first scene, acting as the symbolic negotiator between Korea and the United States. Tree symbol. But we wont do it without your approval. East Asians are often stereotyped as clueless touristsanother manifestation of the perpetual foreigner, albeit from a different angleand no item of clothing embodies the tourist more than the fanny pack. English in Parasite is the bartering chip itself, but English in Okja is the strategy behind the whole game, one where the stakes are the autonomy and agency of an entire people. Mija, who is unaware of the English language, is lured away by her grandfather when they are taking Okja away, and presents her with a pig figure made of solid gold, while revealing the truth to her softly by himself. Kim and a news anchor speak in English on a 24-hour US news channel. White supremacy and colonialitys greatest strength is their ability to divide and conquer. Bong Joon-ho, revealed that Okja is just a name. "In my movie, Mija's favorite food is chicken stew. It is a female name in Korea, but its a little outdated. For ten years she has lived an innocent, Eden-like existence in the company of the young girl Mija (An Seo Hyun) in a remote South Korean forest. We all love the face and the anus, as American as apple pie! The website's critical consensus reads, "Okja sees Bong Joon-ho continuing to create defiantly eclectic entertainment and still hitting more than enough of his narrative targets in the midst of a tricky tonal juggling act. All the film's many threads ultimately come back to questions of trust: what it means to keep it or betray trust, and whether there are circumstances where betrayal is necessary, and whether the trust between human and human is more meaningful than the trust between human and animal. After all, K has no problem remembering a complex phrase Mija said to him in Korean; it doesnt seem likely that he would misremember Jays parting words. K: . Mija! B: The Beginning. This disc's gorgeous 4K transfer and slate of extras make a strong case for the importance of physical releases of streaming titles. In a post credits scene, Jay is released from prison and boards a bus with K, the other ALF members and some new recruits as the group preps to disrupt a major Mirando meeting involving all of its shareholders. Taken as a whole, I read Okja as a story that reveals the atrocities inherent in linguistic assimilation, even as it acknowledges that the ability to use English can be a tool of liberation for the marginalized. His film Parasite also made history at the 92nd Academy Awards Awards as the first non-English film to win Best Picture. K: [presses his nail into his finger away from the others view] She agrees to the mission. Mija chases down the truck but it is intercepted by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). [27] Critic A.O. [I want to go to the mountains with Okja.]. The ambitious screenplay includes discussions of corporate responsibility, the ethics of meat consumption, the acceptable threshold of animal cruelty, and other matters that you might not expect to see find in a film so simply told and lavishly produced. And this is where Okja comes in. Jay: Please, dont touch her! An all-star cast including Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, and Jake Gyllenhaal is led by An Seo Hyun as Mija, a South Korean girl growing up on an Edenic mountainside with her grandfather and best . The humor in the miscommunication gets lost in the translation: K is not actually repeating the word stop. Both and mean stop, but only the latter is used for cars. Working with a rough draft of the story, Ronson helped develop the English-speaking characters.[8]. I believe that the mismatch between Ks tattoo and Jays words is deliberate. We are dependent on its existence for our own, with all the complicity and trappings that that entails. Parasite made history in 2020 when it became the first film not in English to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. Only our voices cannot be. The love between Okja and her human will leave you rooting for a happy ending, Okja is the newest offering from visionary filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, CEO Lucy Mirando and her corporate inner circle represent the darker side of the industry, Mija's world changes when she discovers the horrors that await her helpless best friend, Okja may be big and cuddly but Bong says his CGI creation 'bears no symbolism' to Studio Ghibli's Totoro, Director Bong insists that Okja wasn't made as an anti-meat movie, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. Ks tattoo calls out the fact that translation involves choice, that interpretation is just thatone possible manifestation of meaning. 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