I once read that the best science fiction doesn’t really deal with aliens, distant planets, laser weapons, and space travel. The best science fiction only uses these things as a medium to tell us about humanity. That element of the fantastic reveals truths about our shared condition that just wouldn’t stand in such stark relief if told by more conventional means.
By this measure, District 9 is one of the best science fiction films of the decade. It’s a thinly veiled treatise on the hate and hope inherent in the human heart, but its lack of subtlety doesn’t diminish its power. District 9 doesn’t preach to us. It simply tells a riveting and haunting story that is disturbing, sad, uplifting, and exciting by turns. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it is an entertaining, and even important, film.
District 9 is told in a unique documentary style and presents a world in which an alien spacecraft arrived over the skyline of Johannesburg in 1982. But rather than initiating an attack or sending out an intergalactic envoy, the ship simply hung over the city like a listless cloud. After three months, the South African government finally decided to break into the ship and found over a million aliens on board, many sick and dying.
With little choice, the government was forced to take the aliens in and quarantine them in a section of the city known as District 9. After 20 years, the alien population has ballooned to over 2 million and District 9 has become an impoverished ghetto. Graft and corruption have sprung up with gangs and warlords trading in food and interspecies prostitution for alien weapons – even though no one has figured out how to make them work. Tensions between the human population and the alien squatters have reached a boiling point, spilling over into bloody riots and resulting in harsh legal discrimination.
The human citizens of Johannesburg demand that the aliens, referred to by the derogatory term “prawns”, be removed from the city. Facing public pressure, MNU, the multinational corporation tasked with overseeing alien affairs, determines to relocate the alien population from District 9 to a newer, more regulated facility many miles outside of town. But before MNU can forcibly remove the prawns, they must legally give them 24 hours notice of the eviction and obtain their signatures.
Wikus Van Der Merwe, an eager and tactless office worker in MNU’s massive headquarters, is tasked with leading the eviction operation. Wikus would like to think of himself as an expert, but he is in over his head. Things soon spiral out of control and Wikus is exposed to a strange alien material.
That night he is rushed to the emergency room and then stolen away into the horrific labs of the MNU weapons research program. Wikus escapes, but he finds himself a hunted man with nowhere to hide and no hope of survival but in the slums of District 9.
Writer and director Neill Blomkamp grew up in South Africa during the dark days of apartheid, a strict form of racial segregation and subjugation enforced by that country’s National Party. District 9 obviously draws heavily from this historical context (even filming among the real world shacks in the slums of Johannesburg), but a lot of its themes and visual style seem to also be inspired by films like Alien Nation, Independence Day, Aliens, and Cloverfield (the documentary style actually brings to mind both the British and American versions of The Office).
Nothing here is particularly new, and yet, perhaps even by combining all of these elements, Blomkamp delivers something that doesn’t look or sound or even feel like any film we’ve seen before. The setting itself is alien and interesting – somehow both fresh and familiar to Western eyes. The actors speak in exotic accents and they live in a world not unlike our own and yet vitally different in the details.
It’s a quite logical limitation, but most films that deal with issues of hatred and racism must typically focus on the plight of one race or ethic group at the hands of another. One is seen as evil, and one is seen as good. While this can certainly be true in the context of a historical period or situation, it doesn’t offer us a complete picture of humanity.
District 9 removes that limitation by providing a new and completely alien target, proving that all men - black, white, ruthless corporate scientist or insane warlord - are capable of inhuman and disgusting acts of cruelty. Mankind – corporate and individual – has the capacity for both great evil and great good. No one character embodies this notion more than Wikus Van Der Merwe.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie with such a fully developed and complex character. Sharlto Copley is not an actor by trade, but he is spectacular here, conveying the essence of both an everyman and an antihero. Wikus is, at times, everything we despise in ourselves and yet, buried deep, deep within his timid heart, there beats a spark of the heroism and hope we all strive to reach.
Wikus isn’t a good man. He isn’t smart, or strong, or brave, or even particularly lucky. But he is determined; he is so motivated that he refuses to give up, even in the face of impossible odds. This urge for survival, and eventually, justice, propels Wikus on a journey that transforms him in more ways than one.
At the beginning of the film, he thinks nothing of setting fire to helpless alien eggs, and even laughs as the incubating infants go up “like popcorn”; but by the end of the film, he has so redeemed himself that he is willing to lay down his own life to put an end to the mistreatment of the alien visitors.
The film’s progression is in many ways parallels Wikus’ spiritual journey. The first act is hauntingly real and visceral. The camera follows Wikus and his crew with a relentless and squirming sense of truth as they harass and ridicule the residents of District 9 without any hint of a troubled conscience. It’s genuinely heartbreaking and suspenseful.
The second act, in which Wikus must come to terms with the prejudice in his own heart and escape the clutches of a world turned against him, is clearly the most conventional, and, as a consequence, the weakest part of the film. The movie loses its head of steam, but it’s still a horrifying, disturbing, sad, and desperate journey.
But just when I thought I had District 9 figured out, it takes an abrupt and welcome turn into all-out blockbuster territory in its final act. The last 45 minutes are extremely exciting and cathartic, ignited by righteous anger and fuelled by some of the best choreographed and most originally realized action I’ve seen in a long time. Better still, the documentary style actually adds to the sense of immersion rather than distracting the audience with hyper-cuts and a quaking camera. This is, by far, the best and most involving conclusion I’ve seen in a film all year, and it carried me, breathless, to the haunting final moments.
Lest there be any confusion, let me make myself abundantly clear: District 9 is not for kids. Violence in the film is abundant, explicit, and bloody. Both humans and aliens are shot, detonated, beaten, slashed, electrocuted, and ripped apart. The alien weapons seem designed to reduce their targets a gooey mush, leaving only bits of gore and gristle behind. Actually, come to think of it, a lot of this movie is pretty goopy in general.
A couple of disturbing executions are caught on camera, there’s a realistic scene of torture, and a portion of the film takes place in the MNU labs, filled with the remnants of their grisly experiments. District 9 also features an extremely heavy dose of strong language, but some of it flies under the radar thanks to the actors’ accents. Rounding out the trifecta, there is no sex, but there is some graphic dialogue.
For me, District 9 feels like the first important, socially resonate movie made by and for my generation (the “Nerd Boy” generation – if you will). It makes concessions to my generation’s cinematic tastes (for instance, an extended sequence features an awesome walking tank that looks like a cross between the power loader in Aliens and the armored suits from such classic video games as MechWarrior and Metal Gear), but it never forgets the reason it exists. It’s a unique and moving film that uses sci-fi conventions as a spring board rather than a crutch. District 9 is an action movie with a message, and while it is certainly not for children, for adults and older teens, I might even call it essential viewing.
Caution Rating: 10 (Plus)
