Best Picture Review #3: District 9
First-time director Neill Blomkamp wants you to know that District 9 is an important movie. Nothing is more obvious in the first act of the film. If you didn't get the District 6 reference in the title, Blomkamp hits you over the head with repeated mentions of South Africa, then ups the ante by naming his protagonist van der Merwe (There's an entire genre of jokes in South Africa devoted to a bumbling idiot named van der Merwe - here's one example). The first 10 minutes skewers bureaucratic inadequacy and exposes human nature's xenophobic tendencies in no uncertain terms.
As the mockumentary structure advances the storyline, it becomes increasingly apparent that the audience is being set up for a huge bait-and-switch (minor spoilers ahead). Wikus van der Merwe's eventual victimization is fairly predictable, but the manner in which his rejection comes to be was a pleasant surprise to me. His somewhat Kafka-esque metamorphosis provides some of the more poignant and thought-provoking scenes of the film. The scene where Wikus' wife Tania calls him back - apparently after much deliberation; Blomkamp takes care to tell us plenty of time has passed - and accepts him despite his compromised state was a particularly touching scene.
However, the problem with that precise scene underscores the problem of the film of the whole - the story runs out of steam and starts to rely on action movie cliches. When watching the scene in question the first time, I was hung up on the idea that the phone call might be a trap set by fictional MNU to get a fix on the cell phone location. (Sorry to be so vague. If you've seen the movie, you understand that I'm trying to avoid spoiling too much.) In fact, MNU has not thought of this and is apparently resigned to spreading negative propaganda. The subsequent scenes resemble a capture the flag game that could have been in the Halo movie that Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson were reportedly working on before moving on to District 9.
While the final act seems weak due to way too many last-second close calls, it could have been redeemed had the relationship between van der Merwe and Christopher Johnson been stronger. D9 tries to sell Wikus' final act as selfless and sacrificial, but given his repeated pleas to Johnson to "fix him," his transformation as a character rings false.
In light of this disappointing denouement, the promise of a cutting commentary on humanity that District 9 makes at the outset seems hollow. The effect is almost as if the two halves of the movie were written by two different people, which is entirely possible given the split screenwriting credit. I wrote this review once before deleting it and writing a more favorable review (it may not sound like it, but there's plenty to like here), but eventually I came back and rewrote the original one. I don't think it's overly harsh to be down on the movie as a whole because it doesn't live up to its own lofty expectations, especially when they're made so explicit as I outlined above. I look forward to a more experienced director remaking this movie in 20 years. A successful formula for the fictional future director living in my head would be to keep the first two-thirds of the story and then to take the ending in a completely different direction. Here's hoping. 3.5/5
2 comments:
3.5 may still be a bit generous in my opinion. For me the movie couldn't decide how it was going to tell it's story. Sometimes the camera was a character in the story, and sometimes it wasn't. While I could certainly pick up on the times it was each it was no less frustrating to me as a viewer. I found it very difficult to settle in to the arc. Couple that with the purposefully incomplete story line which I find very dissatisfying, and very quickly I loose patience with a film that already thinks too much of itself since it's commenting on a hefty subject. You correctly diagnose the major problem as the movie abandons inportant character arches in favor of action sequences. I do think that the Wikus starts to realize the wrong-ness of the action against the aliens, but it's complete tarnished by his selfish motives. I found at the end of the film that the only thing I cared about know from the story was the thing that it was unwilling to tell me: what did Christopher do 3 years later?
This nomination is ort of indicative to me of a few movies every year that get nominated for some reason other than their merit as a film. In this case The Academy has it's hands tied by subject matter. They must nominate it because it is about District 6.
Thanks for reading, man. I did think about giving it a lower rating (and when I do my wrap-up of all the reviews, I still may), but like I said, there was still plenty to like. As an example, I appreciated the fact that the aliens weren't cute and cuddly. Blomkamp didn't want us to sympathize with them because they look like us, but because of their status as life-forms. I do share your frustrations, though.
As far as the Academy goes, I think you're right in that the movie does share similar characteristics with other Oscar-baiting films. I do wonder if it would have made the cut if there were only 5 nominees this year, but we'll never truly know because the Academy doesn't share detailed results, just nominees and winners. There were plenty of other works that I believe were worthy of a nomination over District 9, which is disappointing.
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