The “see as I (and thus the audience) learn to identify with them by physically becoming one” trope is a bit of a classic. As this was an allegory for apartheid I conjured an image pretty near the start of the main character blacking up with shoe polish to pass himself off in the townships. Giggling at body horror probably wasn’t the response the director was aiming for.
I was really liking the first half hour or so, where it was this brutal, darkly comic mockumentary, but I lost interest when that ended and it began rolling out the clichés. That said, I liked the main character. Or rather I didn't. Which I liked. I can’t think of many films made with a central character so irredeemably unpleasant, which made empathising with him and his point of view an especially cunning piece of storytelling, and would have made his development really rather special. If it hadn’t been a classical epiphany affair.
I believe it created another issue when it attempted to switch seamlessly from the internal documentary to the external plot. It was an interesting idea, but one I found jarring. It highlighted the nature of the faux realism they intended to create, made you aware of the visual code of the shakey-cam, part of our learned language of reality on screen. This really rather effectively eliminated its purpose. I also spent a good five minutes wondering why the camera crew would be filming such things.
Also? If you’re going to create an allegory about racist attitudes, having all but one of the black guys be disposable, miscellaneous, crazy, cannibalistic, shamanistic cock-munglers breaks up the central message a little. Muddies those particular waters.
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