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‘Okja' is a romping tale with a social conscience
If you introduce the genes of a hippopotamus and a St. Bernard into the genome of Babe (yes, of the "Pig in the City" fame), you just might get Okja, the supersized pig in the eponymous new Netflix film directed by Korean ® filmmaker Bong Joon Ho.
"Okja" (2017) opens with much hype and fanfare. Literally. Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), fireball CEO of a global corporation, plays host to a histrionic multimedia press launch to debut what she claims to be a non-genetically-modified "superpig" developed from a unique porcine individual discovered in some remote Chilean farm. The one pig is made to be the genetic begetter, by "non-forced, natural means," of 26 piglets, each to be raised by chosen farmers from around the world, after which the Mirando Corporation would be able to determine the best environment for the new designer pig.
Lucy banners her company's new core values - "environment and life" - and the promise of ending world hunger, while keeping the environmental footprint to a minimum, and, most importantly, producing delicious meat.
Jump cut 10 years later to an isolated farm in a mountainous region of South Korea. A young orphan girl named Mija (Ahn-Seo Hyun) is going about her daily activities in the company of a winsome animal about the size of a hippo, which she and her farmer grandfather had named "Okja." Noticeably, Okja is behaving more like a pet dog than a free-range farm animal....