Early in his film, Korean writer-director Chang-dong Lee tells us his theme. Holding an apple, the teacher tells his students that, to write poetry, you must first see, really see the world around you. Mija is a 66-year-old pensioner in his class who works part-time as a caregiver for a stroke victim and is raising her sullen slob of a teenage grandson. She struggles with the poetry, but she does begin to see the people in her world with clarity – and it’s not a pretty picture. What she learns to see is human behavior ranging from the venal to the inhumane.
The key to the film’s success is the performance of Jeong-hie Yun as Mija, a protagonist who spends the entire movie observing. Her doctor tells her that her failing memory is the start of something far worse. Sometimes she doesn’t see what we see because she is distracted. But sometimes she doesn’t act like she sees because of denial or avoidance. Sometimes she is disoriented. But she has moments of piercing lucidity, and those moments are unsparing.
This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011. You can stream Poetry from Amazon and Vudu.
OKJAOkja is a master filmmaker’s wickedly biting anti-corporate satire. It’s an endearing Girl-And-Her-Supermutant story with one of the best comic chase scenes since What’s Up, Doc?. Okja also carries a strident anti-meat-eating message (see my diatribe several paragraphs below).
Director Bong Joon Ho made Memories of Murder, which I consider a masterpiece of neo-noir and of both the cop buddy and serial killer sub-genres. I have Memories of Murder at #14 on my Best Movies of the 21st Century – So Far. I also loved his affecting drama Mother. As with the sci-fi hit Snowpiercer, Bong Joon Ho got a Hollywood budget for Okja so his imagination could run wild.
And run wild he does. A malevolent and monstrous corporation has engineered “superpigs” for future human consumption. In a scheme to “Green wash” the product, they have distributed the least disturbing-looking of these freaks to be raised by indigenous farmers around the world. One of the superpigs, a female named Okja, is raised on a verdant Korean mountainside by the girl Mija (Seo-hyun Ahn) and her grandfather, Mija and Okja are best friends. But Mija will need to find a way to thwart the corporate baddies who have planned all along to turn Okja into mutant bacon.
The chubby and clumsy Okja, created by a first-rate Korean CGI crew, is instantly lovable for her love for and loyalty to Mija – they even spoon at bedtime. Okja looks and moves more like a hippo than a pig, which makes the movie’s point about genetic engineering while keeping her adorable.
Most of Okja is pretty funny. It opens with the artificially happy music of an industrial film (one imagines a title like Your Friend the Manhole). There’s a slacker Millennial with the worst possible attitude for an employee, sure to be recognized by any boss in the audience. The humor ranges from the sly and cutting corporate satire to the literally scatological comedy when Okja expels manure.
The funniest part of Okja is a cell of sweetly earnest and deluded radical animal rights activists, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), led by Jay (Paul Dano). One of their members is so committed to erasing the human impact on the planet that he refuses to eat anything from animals OR plants, and has to be periodically force-fed by his companions when he passes out from malnutrition. The ALF plans elaborate actions, like repeated rescues of Okja, that play out in mad cap craziness that brings to mind the best of Mack Sennett and Richard Lester.
Okja’s highlight is a chase scene that begins in a tunnel and ends in an underground mall in Seoul. It’s a triumph of zany thrills.
Tilda Swinton plays twin sisters who are heirs to a vile robber baron industrialist and, with great relish, Swinton depicts them to represent contrasting faces of modern capitalism. One is the corporate leader who wants to make money by exploiting the rest of us, but wants to be loved for it and be perceived as benign; I know a big business leader who continually describes himself as of “the employer community”. The other is the type of unapologetic, Social Darwinist corporate villain who just doesn’t care what we think – if it has value, she wants it and she will take it.
Seo-hyun Ahn is appropriately steely as the spunky Mija. Paul Dano is lovable as the clumsily passionate activist leader. A very broad Jake Gyllenhall plays a corporate spokesman at once despicable, dissolute and ridiculous in his 1970s shorts.
There’s one superb performance in Okja that is escaping critical notice. Giancarlo Esposito plays Frank, the chief henchman and corporate advisor to both of the twin sister CEOs. Frank is a master of “managing up”, and one scene in which he spurs a CEO to adopt his idea – and really, really believe that she thought up herself – is brilliantly funny. In a movie filled with very broad performances, Esposito underplays Frank to great effect.
I do have a problem with Okja’s militant anti-meat perspective. I advocate knowing where our food comes from, whether it’s the sweet corn that I buy at my farmer’s market from a farmer in Brentwood, California, or the preserved lemons I buy in a jar from Egypt. Today less than 2% of Americans live on farms, but in my parents’ day, pretty much everyone had experienced firsthand the butchering of meat.
Humans have been eating meat since we could catch another animal (or stumble across one that was already dead). There is no way to eat meat without killing an animal, skinning and bleeding it and cutting it up. Even chicken and steers and pigs that are raised free-range, fed organic corn and yada yada still have to be killed and cut up somewhere – they don’t jump into those shrink-wrapped packages themselves. All that being said, I understand that some people prefer not to see this.
I have toured a meat-packing plant, and the slaughterhouse in Okja is a pretty accurate depiction of the process, although the lighting has been dimmed for a more sinister effect. I have also seen animals slaughtered for dinner on an All-American family farm, and the slaughterhouse is much cleaner and arguably more humane.
Still, even in Okja, Mija catches fish for dinner, and her grandfather raises – and cooks – chickens. I respect the members of my own family who choose not to eat animals. But I think that Okja runs astray by making this perfectly reasonable choice into a moral litmus test.
Some folks will also have a problem with the movie’s extreme changes in tone. The Animal Liberation Front’s Seoul rescue scene has a very Keystone Kops vibe, where nobody gets hurt. In the Manhattan chase scene, however, commandos rain down realistic and brutal violence upon the Animal Liberation Front, making the point that corporate forces play for keeps.
I do NOT recommend Okja for children younger than middle school-aged, for whom the slaughterhouse scenes could be traumatizing.
There’s ONE MORE scene at the very end of the closing credits, so stick around.
I saw Okja at a theatrical preview, courtesy of the Camera Cinema Club; most viewers are going to watch this at home on Netflix, but I recommend viewing Okja on the big screen if you get the chance.
Turner Classic Movies usually serves up war movies on the Memorial Day weekend, and, on May 27, TCM will present an uncommon slate of Korean War movies. Most of the featured films were made between 1951 and 1957 – more or less contemporaneously with the conflict. If you want to survey this subgenre, here’s your chance.
The best two are:
Men in War (1957): An infantry lieutenant (Robert Ryan) must lead his platoon out of a desperate situation, and he encounters a cynical and insubordinate sergeant (Aldo Ray) loyally driving a jeep with his PTSD-addled colonel (Robert Keith). In conflict with each other, they must navigate through enemy units to safety. Director Anthony Mann is known for exploring the psychology of edgy characters, and that’s the case with Men in War.
The Steel Helmet(1951) is a gritty classic by the great writer-director Sam Fuller, a WWII combat vet who brooked no sentimentality about war. Gene Evans, a favorite of the two Sams (Fuller and Peckinpah), is especially good as the sergeant. American war movies of the period tended toward to idealize the war effort, but Fuller relished making war movies with no “recruitment flavor”. Although the Korean War had only been going on for a few months when Fuller wrote the screenplay, he was able to capture the feelings of futility that later pervaded American attitudes about the Korean War.
And these two are unusually thoughtful “message” films:
The Rack (1956): A returning US army captain (Paul Newman) is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy while a POW. He was tortured, and The Rack explores what can be realistically expected of a prisoner under duress. It’s a pretty good movie, and Wendell Corey and Walter Pidgeon co-star.
The Hook (1963): A small unit of GIs is ordered to kill a North Korean prisoner, and this stagey screenplay explores the morality of following – or resisting – orders that violate civilized standards. Kirk Douglas gives one of his testosterone-laden performances.
On the same day, TCM is also airing One Minute to Zero (1952), Target Zero(1955) and Battle Hymn (1957).
This time around, TCM is not showing the three most well-known Korean War movies: The Manchurian Candidate, Pork Chop Hill and M*A*S*H. The precursor to M*A*S*H*, of course, was Battle Circus, a 1953 Humphrey Bogart film about a camp full of rowdy army surgeons.
And here’s a curiosity among Korean War movies: War Hunt, a 1962 film about a rookie (Robert Redford) joining a Korean War unit as a new replacement with John Saxon as the platoon’s psycho killer. Along with Redford, Sidney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola are in the cast, making War Hunt the only film with three Oscar-winning directors as actors. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss Coppola as an uncredited convoy truck driver.
After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.
Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.
The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?
THE HANDMAIDEN
Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.
Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year. You can stream it on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The documentary The Lovers and the Despottells one of those you-would-never-believe-it-if it-were-made-up stories. The late North Korean nutcase Kim Jong-Il, dissatisfied with the cinematic element in his propaganda machine, sought an upgrade by KIDNAPPING a top South Korean director and his movie star wife.
The story of the kidnapping and their escape spans two decades and is a real Cold War thriller. One interesting aspect is that there was some question as to whether the two were actually kidnapped or instead defected – after all, the director’s career was in a downturn in South Korea and was ultimately resurrected in the North. But, come one, who escapes from South Korea to North Korea?
The proof of their kidnapping is both convincing and mind-boggling. The craziness of the North Korean regime has created such anti-communist paranoia in South Korea that the kidnapping vs defection question is still unresolved for some – and that’s crazy in and of itself.
The Lovers and the Despot will make good companion piece to Under the Sun, the documentary expose of Korea under its current Great Madman Leader, Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-un.
The Lovers and the Despot is now available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and cable and satellite TV on demand.
After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.
Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.
The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?
THE HANDMAIDEN
Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.
Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year.
