becoming the alien:

Andries du Toit: District 9 is fresh and transgressive, hilariously funny and absolutely horrifying: utterly brutal, sly, streetwise and in your face. It’s not a voice from the ghetto – it is, completely and incontrovertibly, a white voice – but is a voice from the postcolonial periphery; a voice speaking harshly, grittily and urgently about the surrealism of racism and the confluence of violence and normality here at the edges of the West’s old empire.

But to whom does it speak?

SHOOT: It speaks to any person in a somewhat privileged position. In short, The Haves, and our attitude to The Havenots. It says in essence, what it is like to live their life, and that we can be human and humane whatever our position, because there is enough suffering out there to add discrimination to it.

Although I was enthused by the idea, I was also dismissive of another 'political' South African story. I suppose it is, but Blomkamp's take is so fresh and unsual, it isn't depressing, but rather funny, riveting and finally, a thrill ride.

clipped from asubtleknife.wordpress.com wikus-van-der-merwe"> The whole point of Wikus, of course, is that he is such a prat. He is thick as a plank. He is awful. He is as unlike a Bruce Willis or a Samuel Jackson as it is possible to be – and this is at least partly because he is Afrikaans. He is not just Afrikaans, he is a rockspider. He is a doos, a chop, a moegoe. He mangles English with hilarious ineptness. He is cringe-makingly uncool: cheesily in love with his ‘angel’ wife, dorkily clumsy in front of the camera, cravenly obedient to authority, crudely bullying to the aliens that he deals with, and horrifyingly inept in his dealings with his Black underlings, whom he patronizes with cheery ignorance. At the same time, in his earnestness, in his desire to be liked, in his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed eagerness to make a success of this impossible, chaotic, disaster of a job, one cannot but like him.