http://contour-at-the-movies.com/2009/09/02/district-9/ What we're watching and how it measures up in Contour Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:58:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://contour-at-the-movies.com/2009/09/02/district-9/comment-page-1/#comment-440 Tracey Conwell Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:24:01 +0000 http://contour-at-the-movies.com/?p=1534#comment-440 I loved the movie and thought not only was it riveting as an action thriller but it had more significant underpinnings than typical for that kind of big, gory sci-fi flick. It seems to me that one very important element in what makes this movie work is the universality of the movie's theme about the error of pitting us against them, that is, the error of 'alienation', which is here portrayed literally as an alien nation. The documentary style used in the beginning is even more believable because of the setting in South Africa, the home of apartheid, one of this century's more blatantly appalling cases of this phenomenon. With the heavy Afrikaner accents and the Soweto setting of the alien ghetto, the satire about apartheid is successful even if it is a bit heavy-handed. But the message goes beyond South Africa and becomes a morality play about the proclivities of humankind. And, hey, with a morality play it is ok to be a little obvious, isn't it? You want the message to take hold. And take hold is exactly what this one did: it grabbed me in the gut early on and didn't let up until long after I left. The movie succeeded in marrying the nausea and revulsion evoked by its imagery with the underlying message about disenfranchising an entire population of 'others.' So when I left feeling gutted and completely enervated, I realized that the pit in my stomach was greater than the grip of the gore, it was also the sickening sense of seeing in my society and perhaps even myself the same revolting hole in the soul. I loved the movie and thought not only was it riveting as an action thriller but it had more significant underpinnings than typical for that kind of big, gory sci-fi flick. It seems to me that one very important element in what makes this movie work is the universality of the movie’s theme about the error of pitting us against them, that is, the error of ‘alienation’, which is here portrayed literally as an alien nation. The documentary style used in the beginning is even more believable because of the setting in South Africa, the home of apartheid, one of this century’s more blatantly appalling cases of this phenomenon. With the heavy Afrikaner accents and the Soweto setting of the alien ghetto, the satire about apartheid is successful even if it is a bit heavy-handed. But the message goes beyond South Africa and becomes a morality play about the proclivities of humankind. And, hey, with a morality play it is ok to be a little obvious, isn’t it? You want the message to take hold. And take hold is exactly what this one did: it grabbed me in the gut early on and didn’t let up until long after I left. The movie succeeded in marrying the nausea and revulsion evoked by its imagery with the underlying message about disenfranchising an entire population of ‘others.’ So when I left feeling gutted and completely enervated, I realized that the pit in my stomach was greater than the grip of the gore, it was also the sickening sense of seeing in my society and perhaps even myself the same revolting hole in the soul.

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