If You Can't Say Anything Nice...

I've been a little on the fence about the movie District 9, but nonetheless went to see it a second time earlier this week. The first time I'd seen it to make sure that it was fine for Aidan and Brennan, the second time with them. Yes, people and aliens blow up, language is used, but we make a habit of talking about what we watch and the decisions that are made; those boys are learning to use their critical faculties when watching movies or TV, which is damned important.

Some friends have expressed concern or even dismay about the film. Tobias Buckell had an interesting response that I used later to talk with the boys, and Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor responded to a lot of problems she identified with the movie, especially the treatment of the Nigerians, which as you might be able to imagine was a subject somewhat close to her.

My take? Simply put, District 9 is not the astonishing and complex take on apartheid that many reviewers say it is, ("Jo'burg," Lisa? You've spent so much time there you can call it that?) and coming from a middle class white Canadian background, I can't very well speak to much of the background that leads to complaints from elsewhere about the director being a racist. But based on some concerns I've read (often in comment threads, and not necessarily in the two links I supply above) I can point out some of the things I did see:

• There did not appear to any conscious decision to make blacks appear worth less than whites by virtue of not giving them names during talking head interviews in the documentary section. If "man on the street" interviews were done, no names were given. If experts of major players were interviewed, they were identified. This included the head of MNU and Fundiswa (and more about him in a bit)
• Questions about why there only seemed to be one intelligent alien (I won't use the derogatory appellation) were answered to my satisfaction by the presence of the control module underneath his shack. Just how intelligent he was to lead them all there in the first place I'll leave to others
• Naming that alien Christopher Johnson was a definite nod to the colonial habit to either assign Anglicized names to slaves or servants, or for those same individuals to adopt such a name. Note that "Anglicized" does not necessarily mean proper so-called Christian names, since Nadine Gordimer's July's People (which I freely riffed on in my short story "Summer's Humans") has the whites name their servant July, rather than allow him his own name and thus denying him that one piece of humanity. In the movie, substitute whatever the aliens call themselves for the word "humanity."
  
• While it was heavy-handed and not handled very well, the Nigerian leader's desire to take and consume alien body parts was mirrored by MNU's desire to do the same, although in their case "consume" had a slightly different definition. That said, both "mystical" Nigerian gangsters and "rational" multinational scientists and executives want essentially the same thing, and both quite obviously will stop at nothing to attain it
• On first viewing even I was embarrassed by the female Nigerian witch doctor
• The name "MultiNational United" showed a real paucity of imagination
• Back to MNU's treatment of the aliens. In truth, the only human who really comes off well (aside from Wikus, who has a very late conversion) is Fundiswa, who we are told is in jail because he blew the whistle on MNU's illegal activities (a cursory search of the web seems to indicate that South Africa's whistle blower laws are not very good, so maybe his being tossed in the clink is accurate). It seems that every single human, black or white, is not on the side of angels when it comes to the aliens. The exceptions to this would be the "human rights" (really?) protesters, but we only see them as a faceless mob holding signs. They're background noise, a placeholder as MNU vehicles move from one locale to another. Otherwise, the eye cast on humanity in this movie is very jaundiced indeed
• The MNU military "cowboys" were an overt nod to Afrikaaner paramilitary forces, with token blacks allowed on board so we could pretend they weren't another cliche

All that said, I still enjoyed the film, although it isn't the highlight of the movie year. Not even the highlight of the SF movie year, which at the moment is Moon, with Avatar still to come.

Labels: movies, race

More from the Bloggess. It turns out she's been blocked on Twitter by William Shatner, and many (many) people have taken up her cause on the same network. Her silliness and slyness know no bounds, and I admire the insane places her mind takes her, and us.

Labels: humour, Twitter

Another fun one from the Bloggess, A series of helpful post-it notes I left around the house for my husband this week. As usual, some language warnings, but well worth sharing.

Labels: humour, marriage, relationships

I usually contain my movie notes until my end of year wrap-up (see here and here), but I had to make mention of Kathryn Bigelow's new movie The Hurt Locker, which Jo and I went to see today. Bigelow is probably most famous for directing Point Break, but for me she stands out with Near Dark, the other vampire movie of 1987 (who can tell me what the other one was?). The Hurt Locker stars Jeremy Renner, who we quite liked in the short-lived TV series The Unusuals, as a bomb tech in Iraq. It's been getting great reviews, and with justification, I might add.

I'm not going to go into a lengthy review, but I did want to single out a couple of things that Bigelow did right. At the very beginning of the film, when the first explosion takes place, Bigelow does a very stylized slow motion take that includes a frankly incredible view of some of the road rising into the air, as if on a snare drum. Later in the film, Renner's character makes a decision to go a little bit rogue, sneaking out of camp to investigate the death of someone he allowed himself a moment of closeness with.

Both of these moments could have completely derailed the film, I think, but Bigelow shows admirable restraint. Yeah, she has that geeky coolness that I still love, but as wonderful as that first explosion is, more of that would have taken away from the film's true focus, its heart. Renner's decision to chase after the killers would have done much the same, dragging the film down to the level of a standard Hollywood procedural thriller, but again, Bigelow pulls back.

Instead, what we see is a supremely damaged individual who feels safest viewing his world through the lens of the bombs he defuses, even literally at one point through the mask he wears. This characterization, coupled with the slow burning tension that never lets up makes for an astonishing viewing experience. Hell, even the appearances by three somewhat more famous actors (Guy Pearce, David Morse, Ralph Fiennes) doesn't take away from the focus of the movie, and I'm glad for the fact that Bigelow chose a lesser-known name actor so that we could concentrate on what we were watching, not who.

I hope the film does well. It obviously won't need to make Star Trek-type money to make back its nut, and I would naver expect it to. But it deserves an audience, and has to be my leader for best film of the year, as well as best war movie of this still-young century.

Labels: movies