As a mockumentary, it starts off quite well, and draws you into the story at a terrific pace and holds your interest in the characters. The latter half of the movie seems to lose the plot with fake Nigerians (who, rather inexplicably, speak a Malawian language) and some confusion about muti and other examples of the criminal element in the slum that is District 9. This not only plays on South Africans’ insecurities about actual townships that still exist almost as depicted in the movie, but also on the fact that xenophobia affects the country at a very high level. So far, the movie has elicited outrage from some Nigerians, who feel they were inaccurately and subversively portrayed. This is an obvious out for the line a film maker can draw between social commentary, and exploitation and insensitivity. Clearly this is not a movie that wants to be entirely factual, or even close to reality, which it could have been, despite it being a movie about aliens. We understand and like that, but the filmmakers seem to want to exploit the most explosive parts of modern day South Africa, and, literally, blow it to pieces. With writer and first-time director Neill Blomkamp having lived in Canada for many years, it seems possible that not only has he lost touch with what South Africa is like, or even was like, but that he himself is the alien. You end up having no real sympathy for the aliens (who are given the ‘human touch’ in the form of a father-son relationship) and just wishing they’d get on with it and go. The only being we end up having any empathy for is the main protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe. Sharlto Copley’s performance as Wikus was what held the movie together, and made us care enough to watch to the end. He was quite simply mesmerising as a bureaucrat who ends up on the wrong side of an alien relocation project (which echoes apartheid-era relocations of non-white South Africans) For a first time actor, I'd say job well done, boet.
Having said that, even when we understand the allegorical aspects of the story, we also start to shift uncomfortably in our seats as we get to the point when we feel the joke is on us. Even if apartheid South Africa (or even South Africa as we currently know it) operated, looked and felt like this, why must aliens try to make us feel anything different to what we felt when it actually happened and with actual people? Perhaps the question you ask yourself is what the whole point of this venture is. I think a big budget (in South African terms) can only take you so far, and when the smoke from all the explosions has cleared, you have to wonder what the point was. Clearly movie makers, whether they’re the big-budget, big box office Hollywood types or the independents, are still thinking that audiences are not that smart and have basic requirements, even when their movie can quite possibly, as one of my friends put it, induce nerdgasms before it hits our screens. We understand that this movie has got a lot of rave reviews, partly based on the fact that it is a clever retelling of the apartheid story and was written and directed by a South African, and produced in partnership with Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) Even this is not enough for me to go into paroxysms of glee about it. It’s gory, employs some of the same mechanisms as Hollywood, even though it’s been billed as anti-Hollywood, and fails at, what for me are some important details.
Despite all that, I think South African cinema just got a huge shot in the arm. (No pun initially intended.) I’m hoping that this will encourage more alliances and that the wealth of talent in this country gets exposed to the mainstream international audience. Having stated my partial dislike for the movie, I must still say that it was great seeing familiar faces and places, and knowing that they’ve been exposed to a wider international audience, and that many South Africans benefited from its production. A box office upwards of $30 million in its opening weekend in the US alone means the marketing was very clever, and others would be wise to heed how well this works. So while the number one movie in SA this week doesn’t give me any nerdgasms at all (sorry Tony) I have to say it gets an A for sheer effort and the audacity to be the biggest grossing film so far in SA movie history.
Modjadji Books will be publishing my short story "A Requiem for Daniel" as part of an anthology later this year. It is an anthology based on the theme of "Bed" and I cannot wait to read the other entrants' pieces. Looking at the list, some of these women are established authors and writers I admire.
