All we really want from a movie is to be entertained. Something we can slip into, with both novelty and familiarity. A story that has resonance, a clear perspective, and visual sophistication. All the rest – writing, acting, directing, music – must serve the whole. This week, I’ve seen three films which, in very different ways, drew me in and left me lighter, more fulfilled.
DISTRICT 9
Peter Jackson and James Cameron must have talked sometime in the last year or two, right? I mean, two guys who between them have six films which averaged over $1,000,000,000 in world wide revenues must have something to say to each other, right? What, you don’t think Steven Speilberg and George Lucas never shared story ideas?
Reason I’m asking is, the parallels between District 9, which Jackson produced and Avatar (Cameron’s latest baby) are too obvious to ignore. Physically damaged common guy/drone finds a home among the aliens, through physical transformation. Achieves actual biological merger with key weapons needed to overcome a human mercenary army. Leads said aliens to victory over the corporate forces which seek to destroy their culture. Final third of film is an epic battle between alien and human forces, with unlikely allies coming in to help.
And there’s more: both films make heavy use of both Computer Graphic Imaging (CGI) and motion capture technology. And both films weave obvious political lessons into the story arc.
However, no one would ever mistake District 9 for an Avatar clone, or vice versa. First of all, D9 was made for 1/6th the cost of Avatar. Second, the cinematic technology is barely apparent in D9. And third, Jackson’s director, Neill Blomkamp, has chosen a starkly real mode of filming, distinct from the comic book feel Cameron employs.
D9 opens with a pastiche of cinema verite clips to quickly set place, time and circumstance. Hand-held documentary style interviews, clips from fake news shows, and talking heads from a newspaper, an NGO, a science lab, and a university punch us into the plight of Johannesburg, where a giant alien ship has hovered over the city for twenty years.
But these aliens are not an invading force, or a league of godlike purveyors of wondrous technology. We don’t really know why they’ve come; possibly our first contact with beings from another planet arrive as refugees, or became lost when their ship’s controls went haywire. In any event, they stay on board for three months, until local forces enter the ship and find the million or so crew members starving in a toxic stew of their own effluvia.
We transport them down to Jo-burg, where they promptly create a slummish refugee camp, and the parallels to apartheid are just too clear. It’s best said at this point that these aliens are not the cute big-eyed dolls like ET, nor the graceful blue gazelles of Cameron’s Na’vi. No, they are a cross between giant shrimp, ugly reptiles, and insectoid strength. Short tempered, leaderless, enamored of cat-food (cans and all), raw cow, and dumpster diving, they speak a language of clicks and glottals. They out-stay their welcome after getting into riots with the human populace.
A giant multi-national corporation is employed to re-locate them 200 miles out into the bush – trail of tears, anyone? After a keystone cop effort fails to get them moving, the film shifts into a character driven interlude to build sympathy for one particular alien family and the apparatchik human who is assigned to oversee the relocation (he’s the one who melds with their DNA). Then, we shift into the final, comfortably familiar ending battle scenes and chase. It’s hard to tell if the good guys win or not, because, really, it’s hard to tell who the good guys are.
But it didn’t matter; this is basically a thriller, with a whole lot of fascinating social commentary and grubby alien culture mash-up inside. Cool weapons, things blowing up, arrogant corporate leaders, juvenile (literally) heroics, and a hopeless love story provide the background to keep us enthralled. You won’t see another film like this for a while; reminds me a lot of City of God in the way it takes a very gruesome, unsympathetic story, uses unique visuals to move things along, and keeps you sucked in despite your repulsion.
SURFING 50 STATES
In 2006, two footloose young men from Down Under arrive with surfboards in LA, buy a decrepit ice cream truck, and spend the next six months criss-crossing the US, ostensibly to surf in every state. Filmed with a hand-held, in the manner of all youthful adventure documentaries – think Greg Stump’s early ski and snowboard work – the lads are almost as adept as De Tocqueville in unearthing the essence of our vast land. But mostly, they just like having fun with surfboards. This 90 minute flick actually does show them “surfing” in every state, along with a lot of mechanical breakdowns and friendly locals providing whimsical self-parody. So you have to watch carefully to find the wittiest surf spots: a potato conveyor belt in Idaho, a river break over a small dam in Montana, a curling rink in North Dakota, a tanker’s wake in Texas, and a small town re-enactment of The Wizard of Oz in Kansas. Real waves appear in all Pacific states (Alaska included!), around Lake Michigan, and down the East and Gulf Coasts.
Not yet in Netflix, but you can check out their web site. We saw this for free as part of Aspen’s Winterskol entertainment; it’s also appeared at many festivals, winning the “Aspiring Filmmakers Choice Award” at the Telluride Mountain festival. A real hoot.
THE COVE
In Japan, in a small fishing village, almost all the dolphins in shows world wide are captured by a small team which sells the best prospects for 5-6 figures, and massacres the rest (nearly 25,000 a year) for food. Ric O’Barry is the prime focus for this documentary. He began his professional career capturing and then training the five dolphins who played Flipper on the eponymous 60’s Lassie-like TV series. Somewhere towards the end of that run, watching one of his charges commit suicide (his words) he became radicalized, and has devoted the rest of his life to freeing dolphins and exposing their slaughter world-wide. This film chronicles not only the downsides of dolphin captivity, but also the near-military campaign used to document the slaughter in that isolated Japanese cove where the sea literally runs red each fall. The covert operation is riveting, as well as the footage it garners, and is the reason this little film won 30 awards at film festivals world wide in 2009, such as the Audience Award in Sundance and numerous other venues, the New York Film Critics’ Documentary of the year, and hopefully an Oscar nomination next month. Look for it.