TV & Movies Messageboard: One of the best movies I've seen in a very long time... by Antigone

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One of the best movies I've seen in a very long time... *NM* Antigone Send a noteboard - 02/09/2009 12:26:54 AM

I posted this at Facebook, but in the interest of making this a thriving section too and helping Jens out, I am posting it here too.

Brief synopsis and premise - In 1982 an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg - that itself is already something. It sits there for three months. Finally humans enter it and find starving aliens. And these aliens are settled in a detention center called District 9. The movie follows what occurs when an agent comes face to face with the aliens and the following are my thoughts on the film -

A thoughtful and powerful treatise on the nature of apartheid and of human intolerance. Using an encounter with aliens, the director powerfully indicts several recent governments - notably the American detention camps in Guantanamo Bay and the CIA prisons as well as the Australian detention camps - especially Woomera, and the list could probably continue. In using District 9, the detention center, to show how villainous humans can be, the director does not set out necessarily to portray the aliens as just and as the good guys. Nor does he indict white men or black men. Instead he layers shades of gray on both aliens and humans. This is especially true of the anti-hero hero. In the end, I found myself sympathizing more with the aliens than with the humans and also found myself reflecting on the many ills of humanity. And this is not a bad thing. A thoughtful science-fiction movie with quite good effects is a rarity these days. It's what science-fiction can be and, in my opinion, should be. If you get a chance, go see this film.

Antigone
*MySmiley*

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