Okja (Bong Joon-ho, 2017)

Ahn Seo-hyn in Okja

Cast: Ahn Seo-hyun, Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Byun Hee-bong, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, Yun Jee-moon, Shirley Henderson, Daniel Henshall, Devon Bostick, Choi Woo-shik, Choi Hee-seo. Screenplay: Bong Joon-ho, Jon Ronson. Cinematography: Darius Khondji. Production design: Lee Ha-jun, Kevin Thompson. Film editing: Yang Jin-mo. Music: Jung Jae-il.

In comparison with the other films by Bong Joon-ho I've seen, Parasite (2019) and Snowpiercer (2013), Okja seems to me a bit of a misfire, like a kids' movie gone dark, Charlotte's Web crossed with The Shape of Water. It often feels over-frantic, when what I want it to do is score its points against corporate hype and hypocrisy cleanly and without shouting them at us. The film centers on the Mirando Corporation's attempt to develop and market a "superpig," which involves creating animals in a lab and then farming the superpiglets out around the world, seeing which environment is most successful. The winner is judged to be the superpig -- which looks like a cross between a pig, a dog, and a hippopotamus -- raised by Mija (Ahn Seo-yeun) and her grandfather (Byun Hee-bong) on their small farm in the mountains of South Korea. The kids' movie part of the film is the affection of the girl for her pig, but of course things go awry when the corporation, headed by the air-headed Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), decides to declare Okja the best of all superpigs -- followed, of course, by introducing all manner of superpig food products, something that Mija never suspects. Lucy's henchmen include Johnny Wilcox, a star of TV animal programs, played a little too frantically against type by Jake Gyllenhaal, and the  suave corporado Frank Dawson, in a more understatedly sinister performance by Giancarlo Esposito. Things go awry when an animal-rights organization, a caricature of PETA (which often seems to caricature itself), staffed by enthusiasts who give themselves pseudonyms like Jay (Paul Dano) and K. (Steven Yeun), take Okja's side and plot to expose the mistreatment of the superpigs in Mirando's terrifying abattoir. There's also a subplot about Lucy and her supposedly more evil sister, Nancy, also played by Swinton, but it feels unnecessary. There is some fun to be had in the film, with its elaborate chase scenes, but I found myself a little exhausted by its end.

Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)

Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano, Dylan Minnette, Zoë Soul, Erin Gerasimovich, Kyla-Drew, Wayne Duvall, Len Cariou. Screenplay: Aaron Guzikowski. Cinematography: Roger Deakins. Production design: Patrice Vermette. Film editing: Joel Cox, Gary Roach. Music: Jóhann Jóhannson.

Overlong, overcomplicated, and sometimes just flat-out preposterous, Prisoners succeeds in casting a creepy spell even when you're questioning its improbabilities. It succeeds mainly because director Denis Villeneuve trusts that he can overcome the narrative flaws, and because he's working with a phenomenal cast headed by Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal and generously provided with other first-rank actors like Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano. To my mind, Gyllenhaal stands out among even this company for his richly internalized performance as the detective in charge of the disappearance of two little girls. He buttons his shirts to the top, shielding himself against the world, determined to solve the case even when he's taking shit from his own captain and from the angry father of one of the missing girls, a volcano of a man beautifully embodied by Jackman. Roger Deakins's Oscar-nominated cinematography also casts a cold spell over the film, in which the external weather -- rain, snow, bleak days -- is a correlative for the emotions haunting the souls of the characters. There comes a point when you realize that the film isn't meant to be subjected to literal-minded analysis, that it's a parable about cruelty and loss, a validation of Jackman's character's mantra: "Pray for the best, but prepare for the worst." Villeneuve's adherence to this vision and his cast's abundant skills somehow overcome any desire we may have to impose a more realistic view on the material, to pick apart its contrivances and inconsistencies.

Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

Cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Neal Huff, Tommy Nelson, Rod Rondeaux. Screenplay: Jonathan Raymond. Cinematography: Christopher Blauvelt. Production design: David Doernberg. Film editing: Kelly Reichardt. Music: Jeff Grace.

Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff leaves its viewers in the dark in more ways than one. The night scenes are illuminated only by what would have been available to the members of the wagon train making its slow way west: lanterns, firelight, and moonlight. And in the end, we are not allowed conventional movie closure: the survival or demise of the characters, or even whether they made the choice to follow the lead of Meek or of the Indian who has been pressed into service as a guide. Reichardt has flouted so many conventions of the genre that, depending on your willingness to take the film on its own terms, it can be (and has been) described as either gripping or frustrating. She eschews the tendency to turn the American West into a panorama of wide open spaces, instead cramming everything into the old-fashioned Academy ratio for screen framing. She undercuts heroism by never letting us know whether the ostensible hero of the film, Michelle Williams's Emily Tetherow, is right or wrong in her decision to defend the Indian guide against the racist Meek (Bruce Greenwood, hidden behind lots of hair and beard). What we have most of in the film is a sense of being lost, not only physically, in the desert wilds of the far West, but also spiritually, of being cut off from the God the devout members implore so fervently. The isolation is terrifying, especially when the one person who knows the land in which they're wandering doesn't speak their language. We are betrayed by our hope for conventional movie resolutions, and that only makes us feel cut off too.