District 9 takes the premise that aliens do exist and in fact have made it to Earth. But, through interviews with journalists, sociologists and collected scientists, we discover that they didn't land over New York or Hollywood, but over Johannesburg. Rather than rush out, invading army style, they were found to be malnourished, disorganised and suffering severely. An aid camp is immediately set up to support them. Twenty years pass, and the camp becomes a slum; anti-alien sentiment rises in Jo'burg, and MNU (Multi-National United) is contracted to evict the aliens to a new camp, District 10, outside of the city.
Stylistically director Neill Blomkamp has plumped for quasi-documentary filmmaking. Snippets of interviews fill us in with information about the alien arrival very swiftly, and are interspersed with news broadcasts and what appears to be a film crew following the hapless MNU employee, Wikus Van De Merwe, who has been chosen nepotistically to organise the serving of eviction notices to the aliens. It is through Wikus' eyes, or at least, with our eyes on him, that we gain the greatest insight into alien-human relations. Wikus is blase and crass in dealing with the aliens, or 'prawns' as they are dubbed, and even though one knows something is going to go wrong, it is hard not to laugh at how incompetent Wikus proves himself to be.
When things do in fact go wrong, and Wikus finds himself without friends or support, and indeed being pursued by his own company, the film shifts a gear from edgy mockumentary, where the challenge of dealing with race sits side by side with Wikus' ongoing commentary, to nearly-action flick. I say nearly, because I felt that it never quite became full-blown. Or at least, it never leapt the gap into blockbuster territory, as the South African accents and range of camera styles kept that distance from the standard Hollywood action flick. I appreciated that.
What really struck me was just the range of emotions it elicited in me. Yes, there were some difficult questions being posed about racism, and since the film's release the director's handling of the Nigerians in the film, who are portrayed as soulless bandits out only for profit from the hapless aliens, so debased they even eat alien flesh in the hope of magically gaining alien strength, has come into question. But I was also laughing at the natural comedy of the goonish Van De Merwe, and touched as the twist in his life left him at times vomiting and at times in tears. As he squats on a rubbish dump and starts to push cat food into his mouth, only to cry, his face was wracked with the pain of knowing what he was becoming, and what he had lost. That, to me, was a touching moment. Although there was the suggestion of a happy ending, it was not spelt out for us. Perhaps to allow for a sequel, but perhaps because where the strength of the film lay was in the fact it may have had a Hollywood budget, but it wasn't governed by some of the 'laws of filmmaking' that govern many American films in recent years.
***
2009
Sharlto Copley
Dir. Neill Blomkamp
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