District 9
Year:
2009
Directed by:
Neill Blomkamp
Rated:
R
Country:
New Zealand
Country:
South Africa
Runtime:
1 hr. 52 min.
Production Company:
Key Creatives
Written by:
Neill Blomkamp
Terri Tatchell
Starring:
Sharlto Copley
Jason Cope
Vanessa Haywood
Nathalie Boltt
Similar Films:
Wow.
I'm a guy who nearly always prefers a heavy, downbeat ending, in which the audience is forced to grapple with a problem that has no apparent solution, as opposed to endings that are happy just so that we can leave the theater in good spirits with nothing nagging at the conscious. However, District 9 makes me wonder how I could ever feel that way. This film progresses from frightening to angering to disturbing to saddening to heart-wrenching without missing a beat. It is so viscerally and emotionally intense that even I found myself hoping that somehow there could be a happy conclusion to the events. I almost didn't even care how.
Twenty-eight years ago an enormous alien ship arrived at Johannesburg, South Africa. It floated over the city for three months, doing nothing. We finally decided to enter it and see what was inside. Helicopters were sent, and inside, the soldiers found the ship packed with malnourished aliens, apparently abandoned by their leaders, groveling about miserably. The government cordoned off a slum for the aliens to live in, and problems arose. A mixture of dangerous acts of mischief on the aliens' side and prejudiced resentment on the South Africans' side resulted in heated relations between the two species until finally the South African government decided to evict every one of the aliens, moving them to an outdoor-prison-like area away from civilization. We follow Multi-National United (MNU) director Wikus van der Merwe as he leads the violent effort to relocate the aliens that now number in the millions. Things don't go well. The plot escalates drastically when Wikus stumbles upon an alien substance that causes him to slowly metamorphose into one of them. It also turns out that this substance is the aliens' only hope of ever returning to their home planet.
The single most powerful driving force of District 9 is its evocation of the trauma of great change. Every major plot point hinges on this theme. First it is the arrival of the aliens. The images of their ship hovering motionless above Johannesburg are utterly unsettling because of both the thrill of encountering an alien species for the first time as well as the anxiety of not knowing why they are here. Then the focus is on life with the aliens, which turns out to be an incredibly difficult adjustment for the people of South Africa, many of whom just want them gone. What results is civilian violence and government oppression against the species, which seems, on the whole, to be more frightened and disoriented than anything else.
In fact, this change that the aliens face is an equally important part of the story. This is a species that has no idea how our world works. What seem like innocent acts of recreation to them are at times terroristic to us. Their slums are overrun with South African gangs, taking advantage of their weaknesses in order to procure from them their weaponry. They are constantly harassed by the MNU as well. It was a brilliant move by the filmmakers to spend so much time on the aliens' point of view because, while it is certainly frightening to suddenly have an alien species living on your planet, it is exponentially more terrifying to be that alien species, stuck on a strange planet whose inhabitants generally bear only ill will toward you, seeking to exploit you for their gain while simultaneously shunning you from their civilization and forcefully relegating you to the least livable places it can find.
The horror of drastic and unprecedented change does not stop there, though. It is also found, perhaps at its most extreme, in the plotline of Wikus' metamorphosis. Wikus is exposed to the substance that changes him while simultaneously serving eviction notices and searching aliens' houses, all in a sickeningly joyful manner. What he does not realize is that it took the aliens twenty years to extract this fluid from miscellaneous debris from their ship, and it is the one fuel that will allow them to power their ship and leave Earth. Wikus unwittingly sprays himself in the face with it while messing with it blindly. The metamorphosis begins with vomiting, sweating, and black nosebleeds and progresses to the loss of fingernails. Wikus wraps his hand in gauze, hoping the problem will fix itself, but after vomiting a black, viscous substance all over the cake at a party and subsequently being taken to the hospital, the gauze is unwrapped to reveal a fully functional alien hand.
