(2009) ****
This really was astoundingly good.
But I'm not going to say anything here, because you guys probably haven't seen it yet (except for JPX). Follow me to the comments page for more discussion, not because I'm going to spill any spoilers but because I prefer to see movies knowing absolutely nothing (except what I've been carefully spoon-fed by the filmmakers themselves, in the ads and trailers) and I assume you guys like to have the same options.
8 comments:
What struck me most (aside from the post-Cloverfield, post-War of the Worlds storytelling, which was excellent) was the absolute, total cynicism about the Human Condition. The people in the movie (represented by another of these big corporations, like in Robocop or Minority Report) are absolute scum; completely mercenary and immoral. And it's not coming out of nowhere; the film is set in South Africa to drive home the point, but it's really talking about plundering mercenaries in the Middle East (specifically Blackwater in Iraq). The point seems to be that when people get scared or angry, all of their higher ideals just get thrown completely out the window. This is, I think, the most important takeaway from 9/11 and our country's completely insane reaction to it. Spielberg and Matt Reeves (the Cloverfield director) dealt with the pure fear, brilliantly, but District 9 is about the aftermath; the brutal, inhuman fascism that's the end result of the fear. Anyway, this is what sci-fi is for: dark dreams that enlighten us about ourselves. Go see it!
Well put, as always. I took my dad to this and we both loved it! In addition to what you note, the film is also a commentary about that nation’s apartheid system. I love that a Nigerian overlord was added. Apprently, the (only) 29-year old director took a lot of pre-existing footage from the area and superimposed the aliens into save money - brilliant! I have a few minor complaints such as the unrealistic plan to serve eviction notices (unless it was also for some sort of census data) and the fact that in 20 years the military did not spend much time examining the alien ship hovering above the city. I also thought that more scientists should've been involved and more precautions should have been take when dealing directly with the aliens (i.e., Hazmat outfits). These are monior complaints, it's a terrific film.
Arrrgh, so jealous! I am doggedly avoiding even a glance at what you guys are saying. I hope to convince Julie to see this with me this week while the boy's in daycare.
the point that intrigued me is the rapid demoralization of the aliens. they're not even out of their ship yet and they already look like they've given up.
the scene of the humans busting a hole into the side of the ship: they get inside and the aliens are just milling around. it's like the scenes in battlestar after the humans and cylons reach earth and it's uninhabitable. everyone just stands there.
when we lead them down to earth it gets worse.
all that future tech, the powerful weapons, the craft to travel between planets -- our most advanced hardware is like cave-tools by comparison. and even the child of the alien protagonist is smart enough to work everything.
this is a special culture, yet something happened that just made them all give up sometime before or just after they entered our atmosphere.
and once they're actually interned, slobs, man. the internment camp looks like the interior of yoyodyne headquarters where all of the red lectroids are just shuffling around in junk.
a friend of mine made the comment that, in the real world, as soon as the ship left and the threat of retaliation by a rescuing force loomed in the future, humans would be so scared that mobs would probably mass-lynch the remainder back on earth.
didn't seem to happen here. they just moved everything over to the new camp and everything continued much as it had before.
Fitty, those are great points (and I applaud anyone, anywhere who can work a Buckaroo Banzai reference in).
It's pretty clear that the answers to your questions are outside the scope of the movie. You just don't see why any of that happened. Maybe there's a portion of the story that got stripped away as the movie got made.
I think they wanted the aliens to fit into their "Iraqi refugees"/"West Bank survivors"/"Apartheid victims" metaphor, so they did it that way, whether or not they had a sci-fi element in place to explain it, but you knew that already.
quote by "an intelligent friend of mine who is most assuredly not dileep rao" -- he told me to refer to him as such, and he really isn't dileep rao...
"basically, if you think about it - and armond white, the NY Observer critic who basically seems to be a contrarian prick seems to have said it first - every group in the movie has some sort of character development/arc
white people are brutal and prejudiced ... but wikus comes around like a disney character by flick's end
his girlfriend's even pretty ok
the aliens are kind of disgusting and horrible -- but they turn out to be solid and possessed of redeeming qualities
but the nigerians?
they're straight-up barbaric savages
they never come around
never develop
they ambush, kill, glower and steal and are basically the only group that lacks any kind of nuanced portrayal
and they're a REAL group ... a real nationality
in a movie that's touting itself as an allegory for apartheid, it's pretty irresponsible to portray one group - that is exclusively black - as bestial
it would not have been hard to fix
if everyone else didn't have their moment of clarity, i wouldn't have an objection
but members of every other group did
that is all
you can disagree if you'd like, or call it nit-picky, but it's neither a trivial point nor one that you can just dismiss out of hand"
i think it's also fair to say that, stereotyping aside, criminals are criminals, they don't have to become not criminals just because they're in a movie.
and furthermore, the sort of "blackwater" dudes remained thugs throughout the entire movie. so grouping everyone who's white into one category isn't entirely fair or accurate either.
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