REEL REVIEW: District 9
In the United States of Empire, early fall is traditionally a lousy time to see a good movie. The blockbuster-action-thriller days of summer have come and gone, and Hollywood is keeping its Oscar-worthy stuff close to its chest until the holidays. So when something remotely interesting lands in theaters, it’s worth noting.
“District 9” is such a film.
Director Neil Blomkamp’s edgy and provocative virgin effort, supported by New Zealand film titan Peter “Lord of The Rings” Jackson’s Wing Nut films, is a fascinating if flawed piece of movie-making.
Here’s a brief description of the plot – think “Blair Witch Project” meets “Aliens” meets “Borat” – which will make the film sound outlandishly silly. Trust me – it is much better than it sounds.
Flash back to 1990. A gigantic starship lands outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the strange creatures on board – seven-foot-tall click-articulating humanoids covered by crustacean-like armor – are greeted with enthusiastic anticipation by an interested multi-racial human population.
More than two decades later, however, as the film opens in serious mockumentary fashion , the aliens have long worn out their welcome, and the entire crustacean population has been forced into a militarized “refugee camp” called “district nine,” a place of poverty and squalor, and are about to be evicted by a munitions corporation bearing the symbolically sinister name Multi-National United. The lead guy on this eviction project is the unfortunately-named Wikus van der Merwe, a hapless and slightly goofy government agent who mugs for the faux doc camera with grinning alacrity, even as he confronts the desperate “prawns” (the pejorative name given to the aliens by the South African population) scrambling to survive outside their run-down shacks in the dirty neighborhoods of District 9. “We just need you to sign the necessary paperwork,” he amiably asks them, before they go bye bye.
As you can imagine, things soon go horribly wrong. First, a group of Nigerians, led by a charismatic but paralyzed warlord figure named Mumbo, engage in black market trade with the “prawns,” and give the government agents a run for their money. Even more strangely, Wikus is mistakenly splashed with an alien liquid biotech potion, and gradually starts transmogrifying into a “prawn” himself, which ruins his surprise birthday party, not to mention his marriage.
Rather than give away the bulk of the story, I will simply say that I found “District 9” strangely compelling. It begins as a mockumentary, complete with well-coiffed sharply-accented liberal intellectuals yammering on about “interspecies relations” and the like, interspersed with CGI-inspired special effects of the spaceship hovering over the city like a giant insect. Quickly, though, the film sheds its pretensions and turns into a tightly-edited, whipsaw-violent thriller, and ends as an inter-species “buddy” film (That’s all I’ll say about the plot here.)
Some critics have dismissed the film as either too escapist or too racist, but they miss the point. Blomkamp wants us to think about what anthropologists like to call “The Other,” and the images of life in District 9’s “refugee camp” appear disturbingly familiar. In a neat trick, though, he cuts through all preconceived racial stereotypes by showing us how all South Africans, regardless of race, have demonized the aliens and relegated them to third-class status, even though it is clear that their technology and culture is, in many ways, far more advanced.
Moviegoers interested in escapist action will have more than enough to keep them satisfied, but viewers looking for a little more intellectual meat will find some gristle upon which to chew after seeing this film, one of the most unique of the late summer season.
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