Okja
The film that better captures the green movement and its surrounding politics. It might seem to be about an humanised super pig, but it’s all a ruse.
At first (well into the first hour), this seems like a wishy-washy Babe-like about anthropomorphised monster pig and his orphan “owner” (Big Brother surrogate?). Hits all the usual bases: Monsanto-expy pushing GMO on the masses. The Jobsian CEO that creates the reality distortion field turning a meatpacker into a green, healthy trendy corporation. The Steve Irwin imitator that introduces a veneer of respectability and SCIENCE into propaganda. The bucolic animal lovers, allied with the direct action animal welfare people against the eveel animal Nazis. They shoot horses, don’t they?
Now, everyone knows environmentalists and countryside are water and oil. If you live outside a city, there’s no such thing as “the environment” separate from the entirety of your existence. Animals are just part of that. Many small farmers love their animals and still kill them for food, seeing no contradiction there.
A factory farm is a whole other kettle of fish, that is just business. The factory farm capitalist lives in the city. He doesn’t care about destroying the countryside because it’s profitable not to. Of course the factory pigs are individually less impressive than the bespoke Okja. They live in squalor and get processed by cheap labour (Mexicans).
I really think the Political aspects are the core of the film. Cute fat piglets are just the (tasty) bait.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.