When you love a movie, you need to abandon the so-called norms of film reviews and praise it wholeheartedly. "The Ninth District" once again made me feel this passionate desire. The film is dressed in science fiction, but it is actually just a small gimmick for the producer. Except for the two metaphysical objects of aliens and huge spaceships in the film, there is no way of seeing the past affection between earthlings and aliens. What kind of sentiment? For example, the cherishment between cherished friends in "ET"; the merciless killing in "World War". In the past movies, the aliens either sneaked up, under the cover of various concealed measures, and engaged in illegal or legal behavior; or they acted the role of hell evil star in an upright manner, for certain resources or to punish humans. All kinds of excuses such as low-level slaughter. Either way, the aliens must be higher than the terrestrial people, because the logic is that if the aliens are lower than the terrestrial people, then it must be the Earth’s spacecraft that flew into the alien’s den first. "The Ninth District" took advantage of one of the small loopholes to allow aliens to come to the earth and become inhabitants of the most chaotic and dirty slums on the earth.
Therefore, the director used a lot of news documentary footage very cleverly. The obvious way of mirroring is to take a lot of handheld shooting with COS and far lenses. Many handhelds were also used in "Slumdog Millionaire", especially when the two brothers encountered religious riots. Especially obvious. This technique greatly improves the authenticity of the story, and also makes the atmosphere at the beginning of the movie very depressing. The violent expulsion under the live broadcast of the media reminded me of Hong Kong under the British colony, where a large number of Vietnamese people who had been illegally detained had been imprisoned. The nature was similar: the media used their own power to spread the word, and violent organizations were under "relevant laws." Enforcement of law enforcement against these illegally entered refugees with the support of In "The Ninth District", alien refugees and people on earth are mixed together. Every day is not something that "Alien" needs to worry about, but the things of countless other slums on the earth: black market transactions, scavengers, and wanton killings. The sanitary conditions here are so bad that they almost live on the garbage dump. Wikus, the image spokesperson of the violent organization, is also destined to be a victim, personally strangling the alien baby in the embryonic stage. It turns out that he is just a person who regards aliens as beasts. His gentle pulling out of the oxygen tube seems to pinch the audience's throat, breathing hard and suffocating, and no one will have a good impression of him.
It is precisely this kind of first depreciation and then depression that the atmosphere of the film has also gone from low to high, and the rhythm has been accelerated step by step. However, there is no change in the accompanying interview shots, which reduces the documentary shots in the second half of the film, but still maintains a high degree of event reality consistent with the whole film. Back to Wikus, in fact, the pre-mutation Wikus did not only regard aliens as beasts. He regarded everything in the slums as trivial things. Whether they are earthlings or aliens, they must learn from this The city of Johannesburg was expelled. This is Social Darwinism, the foundation of fascism. People are distinguished from noble and inferior. Therefore, for the poor and useless people, even if they cannot all evaporate from the world, they must disappear from the urban world of mankind. Doesn't this kind of xenophobic thinking exist in you and me to some extent? The film does not surpass the vision of the earth, nor our imagination. It only buckles the dead spots in our hearts and constantly instills images of the poor in us.
As for Wikus and the alien Christopher starting to join forces to capture the black liquid, it really returned to the feeling. Flee, find a way out, sacrifice. The most intriguing part is that the most tragic battle takes place between humans and humans. Whether it is Vikus, who has been infected by alien genes, against MNU, or the Nigerian gang in the district and the MNU rush, it is crushing. Burst gunfight. Is all this caused by the huge alien spacecraft coming to Johannesburg? Perhaps this is a superficial reason, but the internal driving force is the internal contradictions of the human group. Differences between classes have created different lifestyles and different values. The arrival of the spacecraft is just a fuse. The role of Wikus is to turn from a victim to a catalyst, a catalyst that triggers human thinking in the future. This meaning is not as obvious as saving the earth at the end of the day. The sacrifice is too blatant and straightforward, and the responsibility and honor it bears is too great to be glorious. However, wouldn't the sacrifice of Wikus's human identity be of any benefit to the earth? In addition to being able to learn to deal with external disasters, should humans look at whether we are creating a social time bomb for ourselves?
We always ignore the contradictions around us, are busy with money and rights, and even forget some beliefs and vows. where is home? Where is the love? We want to go home and return to our original home, so we have Christopher’s appeal to come home, an alien in the form of a "prawn". Although he is an alien in the movie, he is actually no different from humans in terms of emotion, so it is indeed a category that does not belong to the past science fiction films. Here, Christopher can be replaced by a terrestrial or undersea man. The difference lies in the form. , I also have the same feeling of being a wandering home that has remained unchanged for 20 years. Wikus couldn't understand such emotions before he mutated. Only when he became a person abandoned by the family could he accept such emotions deeply and determined to sacrifice himself to fulfill the wish of alien father and son to return home. The final battle was very tragic, and it made the audience unbearable to watch. The heart-piercing desire to break with the enemy and swear to defend their dignity, accompanied by blood plasma and severed limbs, slowly rising up. The spacecraft filled the slum with warmth.
Perhaps the "prawn" alien in the final shot is exactly the alien form after Wikus's mutation. He fiddled with the iron flower broken from an abandoned jar, and continued his innocent love for his wife in a human world that could no longer hold him.
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