2009 has been a great year for the reinvention of the classic motifs of science fiction. Old franchises like Star Trek and Terminator have been revitalized, and the year is ending with James Cameron‘s satisfying epic spectacle, Avatar. Among the most curious and refreshing genre entries this year was Neill Blomkamp‘s District 9. Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson (Dead Alive & the Lord of the Rings trilogy) originally had planned to make a film adaptation of the immensely popular Halo game series, but ultimately abandoned that project and put their energy into an original concept, a gritty and realistic what-if world in which extraterrestrial refugees inhabit the township slums of Johannesburg, South Africa.
The film opens with faux-doc news footage and interviews with journalists and employees of MNU (Multinational United, a plausible if none-too-subtle Evil Corporation), sketching out the 20-plus years since a massive alien ship appeared in the South African sky carrying a million disoriented and starving “prawns”–tall, roughly humanoid crawdads with expressive eyes and an inexplicable craving for cat food. Faced with a unique refugee crisis, the South African government establishes District 9, supposedly a guarded “sanctuary” where the aliens can live safely and avoid violent clashes with their human hosts. Under the auspices of the mercenary MNU, however, the area becomes a rough shanty town.
Through these expository interviews we meet the film’s protagonist, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), the MNU CEO’s ambitious son-in-law and sweater-vest-clad dweeb, who is charged with coordinating the relocation of the Prawns from District 9 to a new camp outside the city, District 10 (I wonder what the sequel will be called). I use the term protagonist because I am extremely reluctant to call Wikus a hero. Early in the film we see him casually committing an act of mass child murder, a crime particularly shocking to me as it seemed so organic and believable. The alien Prawns, of course, are not painted as saintly victims themselves. They, like us, are capable of murder, and the varied, ingeniously nasty handheld weapons they brought on their ship attest to a similar history of bloodshed and savagery. If you take anything away from this review, remember this: District 9 is a brutal, sometimes grotesque mirror on the human race, full of violence and cruelty rivaling or surpassing Paul Verhoeven‘s misunderstood satire Starship Troopers.
But this is certainly not Alien or Independence Day. While the humans and aliens of Jo’burg have a troubled relationship, Wikus’ journey into District 9 is, at least superficially, well-intentioned, and he does eventually find at least a pragmatic semblance of redemption. And let it not be said this movie is short on spectacle–Jackson’s New Zealand-based visual effects house, Weta Workshop, has become the reigning champion of props and CGI wizardry. The alien technology, while distinctive enough from our own, has a refreshingly clunky, metallic quality, their mothership rather resembling a huge hovering oil refinery. The Prawns themselves are thoroughly believable alongside their human co-stars. Even the potentially awkward mix of invented documentary footage and straight narrative editing manages not to be distracting.
It’s not hard to read District 9 as an allegory about apartheid in South Africa, but the parallels are not exclusive to that country. The Prawns represent all refugees and undesirables from our history. While South Africa can boast the coining of the term “concentration camp” and their first use just over a century ago, District 9 can just as easily be compared to the Japanese internment camps or the swelling favelas of Rio. Except with ray guns and spaceships, of course. Heaven forbid we take a science fiction blockbuster too seriously. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Action/Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 12/22/09
[...] DISTRICT 9 [...]