"Snowpiercer" works great purely as entertainment because of the power of its stars and its images. Chris Evans gives a pathos-loaded performance as a rebel who has more than his share of regrets. The audience wants him to overcome his hero's journey, but knows that he will never truly win. Tilda Swinton plays a caricature of Evil Incarnate, not some Eichmann-esque flunky but an honest to goodness fairy tale of sadism given flesh. In a film about the banality of much evil, she reminds us that sometimes the world has its Breiviks. Song Kang-Ho, drifting through the film in a drug-addled haze, takes his role as a MacGuffin and gives his character a constant purpose for being there aside from furthering the plot. One of the best scenes in the film goes to Allison Pill (of "Scott Pilgrim" and some other stuff I've never seen) as a cartoonishly charming elementary school teacher, and Ed Harris, as is typical, makes a lasting impression with his small window of opportunity.
The visuals of the film are even more captivating, and honestly it's hard to use words or even still images to capture just how great some of the sets look. The lower class citizens sleep tightly packed into narrow hallways with minimal comforts, yet the children still find joy in weaving amongst their shabby environs. A bright and colorful school classroom juxtaposes against a black and white propaganda film about the purported savior who built the Snowpiercer. A beautiful sushi restaurant makes you forget for a minute the atrocities and half-truths that are necessary to keep the whole enterprise on the tracks. I don't really think anyone, let alone a hack such as myself, can do justice to the film's visuals; you should just go watch the film.
Beyond its merits as entertainment, "Snowpiercer" works pretty damn well as a rebuke of capitalism. The framing device itself is an assault on contemporary liberal thought. Never mind the fact that there exists some moronic portion of humanity that doesn't even believe in climate change; a real problem lies with many of those who do. It manifests itself in the market-based solutions idolatry that dominates liberal thought, the idea that if we incentivize businesses to use solar power and reusable bags we will correct the course from the Jupiter-sized iceberg that lies ahead. Modern capitalism, driven by constant so-called innovation, glitzy new ways of expressing individuality, and planned obsolescence, creates an unsustainable burden on the Earth regardless of how many electric cars Elon Musk sells. We need more solutions to climate change than simply hoping that science gets us there. And the problems shouldn't fall at the feet of the consumers.
In "Snowpiercer" it eventually is revealed that even greater horrors exist lurking under the surface of an already terrifying enterprise. The young and poor exist merely as pawns and cogs for the elderly and the wealthy, even when they believe they are revolting against that same empire. Only by blowing up the whole damn thing can we begin to work towards a future that might not sustain on oppression alone. It's not particularly difficult to discern that Bong sees this struggle against a near-apocalyptic future as a globalist concern, not merely one limited to the wealthy nations that collaborated on his project. In "Okja," he revisits the concept of the need for a globalist anti-capital solution with what is inarguably a more horrifying setting: the world we live in today.
The story of "Okja" expressed simply is that a megacorporation has developed a "superpig" for wide-scale production and wrapped that inevitable slaughter and devastation in a blanket of "benevolent capitalism." The new CEO of the company (Tilda Swinton, again) promises the world a show of just how wonderful and environmentally friendly these pigs are in the form of a worldwide pig farming contest. A young Korean girl named Mija does not know what is in store for her pig friend Okja, and a group of animal activists with their heads mostly in the right place sets out to save Okja and expose Swinton's company, though not necessarily in that order.
Like "Snowpiercer," "Okja" is just a fun film to watch in spite of its often-grim outlook on the world. The effects used to animate Okja are amazing, and the relationship between the strong-headed Mija and her porcine friend feels more real than anything Christopher Nolan has tried in the last decade. Paul Dano is excellent as the earnest to a fault leader of the activists, equal parts bright-eyed hero and dangerous revolutionary. Swinton is a caricature, again, except that we live in a world where Peter Thiel gets blood infusions to live longer and the President has a doctor who tells him that exercise depletes your lifetime's supply of energy. The film bristles with humor and even triumphant joy, such as Okja's brilliant escapades inside a crowded shopping mall. "Okja" is the kind of movie that could be enjoyed by just about anyone if it weren't so uncompromising in its message.
"Okja" starts off with a ten-year flashback inside the blood-stained walls of a family factory, purportedly a relic of the company's cruel history which Swinton claims she will do away with. In its place will be a benevolent form of big business, one which seeks to exist in harmony with the environment and lead the way to a healthier future for all. This is, of course, a sham, though we only discover the intricacies of the cover-up as the trials mount for the protagonists. I'm not going to spoil the film too much more, because I really want people to watch it and I know how squeamish some folks get about knowing spoilers, but there are a few individual bits I want to talk about.
First, there's Jake Gyllenhaal as an animal-loving TV personality whose fames and fortunes have slipped in the interval since the contest was first announced. His performance has been criticized in some reviews I've seen, but I liked how the character represents the evil that comes with selling out one's passions to remain relevant. It feels akin to how the media covered Trump, not only during the Presidential race but in the years leading up to it, selling out on honest news to make a fortune printing papers full of audacious Birther claims that only a total dunce would believe. Johnny Wilcox really did love animals, but he loved himself and his lifestyle too much to do the right thing, over and over again until he was arguably even more of a monster than his masters.
Then there's Giancarlo Esposito, a conniving corporate executive who wants to swap one evil for another. He's basically all the "never Trump" Republicans, preferring the cold and calculating evil of mainstream corporatism to the eccentric, Jobsian ways of his current boss. He's not really some brilliant mastermind; he's just an opportunist who has stuck his thumb out to the wind and determined which way the world is blowing. Why bother pretending to be good when you already have enough power to get away with being bad?
My favorite character, though, has the most minor of parts in the film. He's just a delivery driver, pretty much the lowest of the low on the corporate pyramid. Tasked by his bosses with an extremely important mission, he first shrugs, then rolls his eyes, and finally gives a glorious middle-finger to an establishment that expects everything of him and pays almost nothing in return. Bong takes this inconspicuous job that could be played in just about any typical way and turns it into one of the film's strongest, most relevant political statements: it is not labor that owes capital gratitude, but the other way around. That the actor gets multiple laughs out of his few minutes on screen is just a bonus.
Ultimately, "Okja" is not a film that will leave you feeling very comfortable about your place in the world. If you eat meat without guilt, you will probably still feel affected by the touching microdrama of this one specific girl and her one specific pig. If you are vegetarian, or vegan, and especially if you are an activist, you might feel crushed by the sacrifices that are made, the troops that are lost in the war for righteousness. If you think the world was doing pretty well before Trump came along, and we're only four years removed from going back to the good old days, well, they made this one while Obama was president.
"Okja" is a Netflix-exclusive big-budget star-studded film, an odd starting point for a film that is so clearly opposed to the accumulation of vast quantities of wealth in the hands of a small elite class. It's impossible to distance the product from its producers, but it's also important to remember that what ultimately speaks is the work itself, not those who put their hands on it. "Okja" is an anti-blockbuster blockbuster, a nightmare for those who believe capitalism will turn around any day now, a strong denouncement of the current order. Go watch it.
No comments:
Post a Comment