District Nine

What happens when you're really into science fiction, you've just got out of film school, you're South African and thus involved with complex questions surrounding racism and then Peter Jackson offers to bankroll your project? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you end up making a film a bit like District 9.

District 9 takes the premise that aliens do exist and in fact have made it to Earth. But, through interviews with journalists, sociologists and collected scientists, we discover that they didn't land over New York or Hollywood, but over Johannesburg. Rather than rush out, invading army style, they were found to be malnourished, disorganised and suffering severely. An aid camp is immediately set up to support them. Twenty years pass, and the camp becomes a slum; anti-alien sentiment rises in Jo'burg, and MNU (Multi-National United) is contracted to evict the aliens to a new camp, District 10, outside of the city.

Stylistically director Neill Blomkamp has plumped for quasi-documentary filmmaking. Snippets of interviews fill us in with information about the alien arrival very swiftly, and are interspersed with news broadcasts and what appears to be a film crew following the hapless MNU employee, Wikus Van De Merwe, who has been chosen nepotistically to organise the serving of eviction notices to the aliens. It is through Wikus' eyes, or at least, with our eyes on him, that we gain the greatest insight into alien-human relations. Wikus is blase and crass in dealing with the aliens, or 'prawns' as they are dubbed, and even though one knows something is going to go wrong, it is hard not to laugh at how incompetent Wikus proves himself to be.

When things do in fact go wrong, and Wikus finds himself without friends or support, and indeed being pursued by his own company, the film shifts a gear from edgy mockumentary, where the challenge of dealing with race sits side by side with Wikus' ongoing commentary, to nearly-action flick. I say nearly, because I felt that it never quite became full-blown. Or at least, it never leapt the gap into blockbuster territory, as the South African accents and range of camera styles kept that distance from the standard Hollywood action flick. I appreciated that.

What really struck me was just the range of emotions it elicited in me. Yes, there were some difficult questions being posed about racism, and since the film's release the director's handling of the Nigerians in the film, who are portrayed as soulless bandits out only for profit from the hapless aliens, so debased they even eat alien flesh in the hope of magically gaining alien strength, has come into question. But I was also laughing at the natural comedy of the goonish Van De Merwe, and touched as the twist in his life left him at times vomiting and at times in tears. As he squats on a rubbish dump and starts to push cat food into his mouth, only to cry, his face was wracked with the pain of knowing what he was becoming, and what he had lost. That, to me, was a touching moment. Although there was the suggestion of a happy ending, it was not spelt out for us. Perhaps to allow for a sequel, but perhaps because where the strength of the film lay was in the fact it may have had a Hollywood budget, but it wasn't governed by some of the 'laws of filmmaking' that govern many American films in recent years.

***

2009

Sharlto Copley

Dir. Neill Blomkamp

Tears Of The Sun

Another lovefilm gem I've finally got around to viewing. I feel as though even if I don't enjoy a film like Tears of the Sun it's at least my moral responsibility to subject myself to viewing third-hand the atrocities there are in this world. Like why people make films and write books about the Holocaust. No, there isn't a bleaker subject. No, it's never 'enjoyable' to read/see stuff about it. Yes, it is necessary to remember and we should be telling people about just how bad events can be. The same goes for Africa and the horror of tribal violence and ethnic cleansing.

An American task force is sent to a Christian mission in Nigeria just as the President is assassinated in a military coup. The new dictator, from the Muslim north of Nigeria, embarks upon religious and ethnic cleansing to 'free' his people. Bruce Willis, when arriving to rescue an American doctor, is compelled to help some Christian Nigerians to the border with Cameroon and safety.

I'm a fan of Bruce Willis and he gives a solid performance as the trooper who doesn't really know how to disobey orders. Having reached extraction point, and got his 'package' away, leaving the refugees to fend for themselves, he experiences a change of heart and heads back to help them. One of his men quietly confronts him, challenging him to explain what they are doing, and what changed in Bruce's head to cause this turnaround. Willis replies: "I'll let you know when I figure it out".

Monica Bellucci overeggs things as the American doctor, and in fact, the film is weakened firstly by how much emphasis they make on whether or not she is American (she married an American, so is entitled to american protection), and secondly by her rather tearful and extravagant performance. For all her stoic nature and strength in the face of adversity in the jungle, she seemed a little too swift, in my view, to weep. The other way in which I struggled with the film was their presentation of the atrocities. Yes, it is important that we see the brutality of tribal violence that we might be chastened, that a lesson may be learned. But at the same time, I didn't feel this presentation tug at my heart strings as it might have done. Am I becoming inured of it? Or did something fall short in the presentation?

The final explosion fight scene and the loss of some of the American soldiers is touching, and filmed fantastically well. The fact that this film does not rely on fight scenes throughout to engage the attention is to its credit, and there are some nice details: the troops have all learnt something of the local patua, so that they can get by; their military precision is at all times obvious; the shift between languages is well managed. We are not faced with bumbling idiots or a more typical Hollywood plot that relies of character mistakes to propel plot. But at the same time, it seemed to me to be a fairly linear plot, and I was not particularly surprised by a final revelation that I suppose should surprise some: it was far too obviously foreshadowed in the opening scenes.

A well put together, cohesive piece, but for my taste, not gung-ho enough to be really an action movie, nor wrestling firmly enough with sensitive materials really to provoke deep consideration or to summon raw emotional impact.

***

Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker

Dir. Antoine Fuqua