My
interest in District 9 began as I stood waiting for mass transit and
gandered at large posters embellished with an inelegant drawing of a
strange creature with a red “no” symbol plastered over it and the
advisement that my bus stop was designated for humans only. There was
no further information, just a website address and phone number. Ooh,
ominous and really clever. It’s one of a very few movie marketing
campaigns that very accurately captures the feeling of the film it
represents. A terrifically original take on the little green men from
outer space genre, District 9 is smart on any level and terribly
entertaining, but it’s even more of an achievement when you consider
that it’s the first feature by writer/director Neill Blomkamp.
They’re here, folks. The aliens have landed and they’ve set up shop in
Johannesburg, where their very large spaceship seems to have simply run
out of gas. The military infiltrates the immobile ship and discovers
its sickly and malnourished inhabitants. Camps are then erected for the
UFO refugees in an area called District 9. At first the creatures are a
source of world curiosity, but like any visitor who’s overstayed his
welcome, their reception sours. The South African public begins to
resent the costs and difficulties of housing these very special
immigrants. Bureaucratic intervention finds Wikus Van De Merwe, an
agreeable pencil-pusher, tasked with the assignment of evicting the
creatures, derogatorily referred to as prawns due to their
crustacean-like appearance, from the crime-ridden tin-shack shantytown
the aliens’ interment camp has devolved into. Backed with a
trigger-happy militia and a documentary film crew, Wikus finds varying
success and comprehension getting the aliens to agree to leave the
camp. His assignment ends suddenly after a search through the home of
an educated prawn named Christopher Johnson uncovers a piece of
outer-space technology that literally blows up in Wikus’ face. The
side-effects of that interaction will bring Wikus much closer to the
aliens that anyone thought possible and also make Wikus a very
sought-after man for all the wrong reasons. Wikus will have to overcome
his own prejudices against the extraterrestrial immigrants and come to
depend on Christopher Johnson for his own survival.
How
fortunate that District 9 is billed as being presented by the Lord of
the Rings director Peter Jackson, guaranteeing an audience who will be
thrilled to discover this brilliant new talent in Neill Blomkamp.
Blomkamp has succeeded in creating a clever and intelligent summer
actioner; aliens, spaceships, far-out weapons, firepower and all. The
highly transparent analogy of the miserable treatment received by the
alien refugees harkens to Blomkamp’s own homeland of South Africa and
its apartheid ghettoes and the way immigrants worldwide are received.
There’s even a wrist-slapping echo to Guantanamo Bay and its endless
imprisonment of people who may or may not actually be criminals. Blomkamp’s
aliens are unexpectedly powerless; utterly at the mercy of human
benefactors who routinely take advantage of them. Gangs of thugs set up
camp within the camp to hide their own criminal activities and gouge the
ETs for their food/narcotic of choice, tinned cat food. Outside the
camp, the government and military operations use the visitors as lab
rats to further both scientific and munitions experiments; little regard
is given to their willingness or the sanctity of their existence. Once
a way is discovered for a human to utilise the aliens’ weapons for their
own devices, a bewildered, unfortunate extraterrestrial is dragged out
for target practise. In the light of such unkindness, is it any wonder
that a small band of immigrants trawls daily through the junk of the
camps mining for materials to repair their ship and get the heck out of
Joburg?
Blomkamp presents his aliens as decidedly other; their scaly, bug-like
exoskeletons and tentacled faces could make them nothing but outer space
creatures. They are hapless and bumbling as any group new to a place
where none of the language or customs are known and no one to rely on
but each other. As such, these immigrants suffer horrifying
indignities. Blomkamp’s humans are fairly one-dimensional caricatures
without compassion and driven by ruthless ambition. It’s only after
Wikus becomes a hunted creature subjected to the same cruelties as the
aliens, does the former office drone gain any perspective or depth.
Blomkamp’s gift is in making the creatures, the wistful and put-upon
Christopher Johnson and his clever little son most particularly, more
human than the humans in his film yet manages to keep them from
saccharine sainthood.
Less
by way of boom-crash action than one might expect from a summer sci-fi
movie, District 9’s thrills are derived from its crackling sharp script
and ingenuity. For example, the spaceship that features so prevalently
in recent posters and ads for the film doesn’t really figure very much
at all; most of the drama takes place on a far too earthly level. The
presentation of the film as a documentary investigating Wikus’
assignment reminds one at first a bit of the Blair Witch Project, but
that comparison is easily put by the wayside by the superior acting and
wonderful cinematography in the wretched slum, a city of tin shacks
piled on top of each other in filth. The aliens are seen often and in
daylight and their CGI renderings are amazing. The audience sees
confusion, anger and sadness out of strangely expressive bulging eyes
and their movements and gestures make up for their scarcity of dialog.
Newcomer Sharlto Copley is fantastic as Wikus, the low-level government
stooge who is reluctantly plunged into the awful world of the aliens.
His dim, cheery amiability early on turns into patronising condescension
during the alien evictions, finally transcending into confusion,
betrayal and anger as a change in Wikus’ situation makes him as open for
exploitation as the extraterrestrials he discovers he really didn’t
understand at all.
Original and ingenious, District 9 is smart, funny and a terrifically
entertaining time at the movies. To consider that this is the work of a
first time feature director makes District 9 a marvel and Neill Blomkamp
a filmmaker to watch.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Aug.
13th, 2009
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