Neill Blomkamp on the necessity of setting ‘District 9’ in Joburg

I’ll be posting my interview with “District 9” star Sharlto Copley later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime, I thought I’d pass along this Andrew O’Hehir interview with the film’s newbie director, Neill Blomkamp, over at Salon.

The piece is wide-ranging, moving from Blomkamp’s background in digital effects and advertising to Copely’s performance to racial issues raised in varrying ways by the picture.  Indeed, one of the more obvious aspects of the film that taps into a grounded sense of human condition, and therefore helps the film to succeed as high science-fiction art among genre entries that largely miss such necessary nuance, is the parallel drawn between the ghettoized alien race of “prawns” and South Africa’s Apartheid system (the film is set in South Africa).

O’Hehir’s query turned into a nice springboard for Blomkamp to again discuss how important it was to set the film in Johannesburg, a perspective I haven’t properly conveyed in this space, despite the Comic-Con coverage.

Here’s what Blomkamp had to say on that front:

I think there’s no question that the movie is a condensation of all the elements in Joburg that had an effect on me when I was growing up. Which means it couldn’t have been set anywhere else…There are many different levels you can break it down into. From a photographic standpoint, there was what I wanted to convey about Johannesburg, which is that it’s almost this burnt, nuclear wasteland, at least in winter. It really is like that.

Then there’s this constant sense of an urban prison, with razor wire and electric fences and armed guards everywhere. It’s a very oppressive-feeling city. I wanted to capture the essence of that, and I thought it was really cool to put science fiction in that environment. I wanted to see science fiction in that city. I mean, I lived there, and you don’t come across cities like that much, especially not in the First World. They don’t exist.

Blomkamp then, of course, goes on to dismiss any intentional metaphors or allegories, but these things are subliminal more often than not.  That having been said, I don’t buy for a minute that the parallels were on the surface as the director was conceiving the film, but it’s fair enough that he wants to steer the conversation away from a political one.  There is plenty to discuss otherwise in this film, to be sure.

Read the rest at Beyond the Multiplex.  “District 9” opens nationwide this Friday, August 14.  Check back later today for my one-on-one with Sharlto Copely.