Okja is an intensely affecting experience

NETFLIX has taken some big swings in original movies and this may be its most charming and accessible effort yet.

NOT content with up-ending TV, Netflix has been making ambitious moves on the film industry.

It started off small with a slate of indie films that probably wouldn’t have had a big distribution in cinemas and then made a couple of bigger moves in snapping up the Oscar-nominated Ava Duvernay documentary 13th and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation.

There are also some Adam Sandler-produced and starring originals in this equation but we’re all better off pretending they don’t exist.

The first of the three most significant swings Netflix has taken in film is out this week — the other two are Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories and the $105 million it paid for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.

Okja is the second English-language film from South Korean master Bong Joon-ho, after the well-received Snowpiercer. And it’s an irresistibly accessible film that won’t feel like homework when you scroll across it.

With a cast that includes Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Yeun and Ahn Seo-hyun, Okja is a rollicking adventure story with soul that will leave you alternatingly clutching at your sides or ugly-crying. If you fail to be moved by Okja by the time the end credits roll, there’s a chance you’re a sociopath — seriously, seek professional help, I’m worried about you.

There’s nothing more creepy than an adult matching her outfit with a child. (Pic: Barry Wetcher/Netflix via AP)

The effusive and narcissistic Lucy Mirando (Swinton) is the chief executive of a family-owned multinational whose corporate history is mired in the hideous creation of napalm. Striving to “clean up” its image, Lucy concocts a hyper-coloured publicity stunt involving the breeding of super-pigs, each to be given to a local farmer across 27 countries where they will be raised over 10 years.

One such pig, Okja, lives with young Mija (Ahn) and her grandfather in the mountains in South Korea. Mija and Okja frolic in the serene, natural beauty that surrounds their ramshackle home in a 10-minute sequence designed to set up their symbiotic existence and total devotion to one another (and persimmons). The success of these early scenes are key to the audience’s emotional investment in their love story.

The unbreakable bond between Mija and Okja is the heart of the film and Bong’s mastery in making you care, deeply, about a young girl and her six-tonne, giant CGI pet pig is first-rate. There is so much humanity imbued in Okja’s warm brown eyes and it’s clear the creature is smart and resourceful.

Mija is separated from Okja when the Mirando Corporation comes to collect its due after the 10-year experiment is over. Okja is due to be transported to the company’s headquarters in New York where she’ll be paraded before meeting a horrifying fate.

Mija, aghast at being torn from her best friend sets out with nothing more than the contents of her piggy bank and gumption on her single-minded rescue mission. Her pursuit of Okja from her mountain home to the streets of Seoul and eventually to NYC has a Terminator-esque endurance to it, only much more endearing.

Along the way, she encounters the odd but well-meaning Animal Liberation Front, activists (Dano, Yeun, Lily Collins, Devon Bostick and Australian actor Daniel Henshaw) who want to expose Mirando’s less-than-wholesome underbelly.

Steely and determined, Mija on her rescue mission. (Pic: Barry Wetcher/Netflix via AP)

Young Ahn is a well-known child actor in South Korea and it’s remarkable that for all the big names in Okja, she is, undoubtedly, the star of the film. She has a tenacity unusual in someone her age, and displays great instincts in her performance, especially when you consider that she’s acting opposite a CGI best friend. And credit to the producers and Bong for having the guts to allow its lead be a child who only speaks Korean — virtually unheard of for a Hollywood-funded movie.

Bong is an imaginative filmmaker and Okja benefits from his confident style with extraordinary set pieces. Some of them are the simple visual delights of Lucy’s fairy floss pink ensemble contrasted against a temple of steel and glass while others are madcap heist sequences. Bong manages to strike the right note between absurdly funny and profoundly moving.

There are themes of corporate greed, animal rights and the increasingly sanitised and detached relationship between humans and nature. But more than that, Okja is the kind of film that is just a joy to watch, because it is beautifully shot and performed.

Above all, Okja is intensely affecting. Don’t be surprised if you catch yourself, days later, thinking about a moment from the film and realise you have a big smile plastered across your face.

Rating: 4/5

Okja is available to stream on Netflix from Wednesday, June 28 at 5pm AEST.

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Jake Gyllenhaal as the hilariously caricature Dr Johnny Wilcox. (Pic: Barry Wetcher/Netflix via AP)