Review of Okja (2017)
Seen in 2019.
Heartfelt childhood friendship with GMO meat.
Where director Bong’s earlier Snowpiercer (2013) works on near-total ignorance of engineering and climate, Okja works on near-total ignorance of engineering and economics. Intelligent creatures with the strength of rhinos and hippos that take 10 years to reach butchering age would be an idiotic way to try to replace pigs. In 2017, agribusiness R&D was instead moving toward vegetable-based and unicellular substitutes, for economic and ecological reasons.
The script’s Mirando is described as an agrochemical giant getting into gene editing. This indicates it’s a stand-in for Monsanto, a favourite target of chemophobes. Mirando is abusing and selling obvious GMOs and pretending they’re natural organisms. This writing caricatures the concept of gene editing as evil, while also caricaturing the public as easily misled. Ironically, the film itself thus misleads the public about the science of gene editing, which has nothing to do with raping and torturing adorable fantasy hippos in dark cages beneath the earth. The year after Okja came out, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA finally approved golden rice as food, no thanks to films like Bong’s.
There’s nothing wrong with Bong’s own technical skills as a director, but he misapplies them on disinformation. As a children’s adventure movie, the first three quarters of an hour work OK, except for Tilda Swinton as the Willy Wonka of meat. Paul Dano reprises his role as a temperamental and violent cult leader from There Will Be Blood (2007), thus misrepresenting even the ALF. The mixing of genres then leads down a rabbit hole so awkward that I lost all interest in Mija’s quest. It is not unlike The Tale of Iya (2013), but it’s got the additional ugliness of Hollywood stars and mediocre visual effects.
References here: Parasite (2019).