A Different Look at Invisible Animal Abuse: OKJA

The article does not contain spoilers.

Okja, shot in 2017 by Bong Joon-ho!

It is a sci-fi/adventure movie. Although the main message of the movie is industrialized animal exploitation, it does not only focus its criticism in this direction to enable us to look at it from an objective point of view. He criticizes the inability of today's animal organizations to act in accordance with the ideology they believe in, how ideologies can push people's boundaries, capitalism, today's advertising understanding, and even unplanned urbanization with its cinematography.

Recently, the film industry has started to deal with animal exploitation a lot, it is important for people to be informed about the subject, but harsh criticism or excessive use of graphics can drive people away. One of the most important features that distinguish Okja from these films is that instead of suddenly showing disturbing graphics to the audience or bluntly putting the message in the eyes of the viewer. The message was given gradually.

Another feature of Okja that is different from other films is that the script is based on friendship. In addition to all the confusion, advertisements and conflicts of interest, we actually witness the efforts of two friends to reunite with each other in the movie. Moving forward with an approach in this direction allows people to empathize more easily, but also allows them to give a more emotional reaction to what will happen in the sequel. The film aims to make the audience question what is on their plate, while doing this, it follows a different path than other films. He first introduces Okja and then tells the reason why it was produced, that is, his "destiny" in a way.

Although the film has a dramatic structure and a harsh message, together with the humor it uses.

it's trying to reduce that tone and be a little more family-friendly. Although this humor does not attract much attention at first, he cannot adjust the dosage in the later minutes of the movie and eventually overshadows the message he wants to give. Although the message intended to be conveyed in the last scene is the ugly reality of the world we live in, it presents an unbalanced and complex finale due to its inability to adjust the balance of humor.

Another problem with the movie is that it contains too many characters. The characters remain as they were presented to us at the beginning of the movie and do not progress through the movie. While trying to give dimension and motivation to the characters, the film cannot go beyond writing one-dimensional characters, and although the performances of the actors are good, their acting is far from exaggeration and sincerity due to bad character writing.

Okja is an emotional and enjoyable movie to watch, despite successfully tackling animal exploitation, which is a huge problem today. The fact that the film does not look at this issue from just one window allows the film to convey its message more clearly and allows us to look at it from different angles.

*This article has been translated into English within the scope of the KHAS110 course.