2017

Director: Joon-ho Bong

Genre: Adventure drama

It's important to know where your food comes from. 

I'm a meat eater and like everyone else with a brain, I love animals. Still, it takes a certain type of person to search for videos of slaughterhouses on youtube. The unending rotation of death, horrible conditions, and mental scarring inflicted on employees is tragic. 

However, this doesn't mean you should feel guilty every time you eat a burger. After all, if you actually traced back where your items of clothing came from, where the electronics you bought were made, you would probably find that these items were produced in horrible working conditions.

From a corporate standpoint, it is easy to see how the treatment of animals can be justified. They say to themselves that the earth suffers from overpopulation, and thus they need to crank out as much food as possible. This is just a facade though. They aren't here to save the word. They're here to make money. 

But this isn't a documentary. 

Mija and Okja are the obvious heart of the film. We follow things through their perspective, even though the film presents us with so many other unique characters. Joon-ho Bong, the director of this film, really likes giving everyone on screen a character. No one is just a generic human in his film. The truck driver transporting Okja to a facility is a guy who hates his job. The guy holding the gun to Okja's head at the end is shown to be struggling between his morals and his job. It's intriguing how this world that's so full of unique life can't recognize how these superpigs also seem to have individual thoughts and feelings.

People may stay away from this film because they see comments talking about how it's telling you to stop eating meat. Anyone who says this is dumb. Mija eats chicken and fish in the first scenes. 

This film is definitely worth watching, and even re-watching so you can check out all the details in the background and the individuality of the extras. It may feel a little cluttered at times. Abrupt tonal shifts are a staple of Joon-ho Bong's films, some scenes may leave with a "what?" feeling, rather than something with more emotional resonance. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️