District 9 Film Review
Neill Blomkamp Delivers an Unconventional, Sci-fi Thrill Ride
Considering the degree to which Peter Jackson’s name has been flaunted in District 9’s advertising campaign, one could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Lord of the Rings himself was behind the camera in this sci-fi thriller. In fact, his presence here is as producer, although his influences can be spied throughout. Instead, Jackson has granted the reigns of District 9 to newcomer Neill Blomkamp, whose own short film Alive in Joburg forms the basis for this first feature. Jackson’s confidence in the young South African director has borne immediate fruit: District 9, in many ways, is a resounding success.
Illegal Aliens
District 9 tells the unconventional tale of man’s first contact with alien life through a thinly disguised (and purposefully so) analogy that gives the film a prescient undercurrent. It goes like this: twenty years before the opening of the film, an alien spaceship appears in the skies over Johannesburg, South Africa. No one knows why. Indeed, the film remains coy about that very fact, sensibly garnering human speculation rather than directly explaining anything. When the aliens are finally released from their seemingly doomed vessel, they are placed in the outskirts of the city in what are essentially slums, (dubbed ‘District 9’) where they quickly become viewed as second class citizens, an unwanted burden of the state that are draining valuable human resources.
The film is quite clearly a study of the kind of mindset that allows apartheid systems to be introduced (the setting is, of course, chosen to further this sense). On the most basic level, the metaphor is rather heavy and ungraceful, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be relevant or meaningful. It also isn’t as simple as it first appears: this is not merely an exercise in heavy-handed politics, however blatant the overall message may seem. The best sci-fi fantasy is often about humans rather than aliens, and District 9 is no exception.
Central to the human element of the film is a wonderful performance from relative unknown Sharlto Copley, a recently promoted employee of Multinational United (MNU), a corporation to whom it has fallen to deal with the ‘problem’ of the prawns, a term the humans use derisively to refer to the aliens. Copley’s character, Wikus van de Merwe, is far from a traditional hero, and indeed goes some way to reinforcing a generally negative portrayal of many of humankind’s less honourable characteristics. It is to Copley’s immense credit that despite his character’s dubious morality, his performance is consistently charismatic, chilling and, at times, quite funny. He even improvised some of his dialogue. For the more prudish amongst you, it should perhaps be noted that this performance would hands down claim the prize (were such a thing to exist) for Most Prolific Use of the F-Word in a Feature Film.
£30 Million? That's a Lot of Prawns...
District 9 follows proudly in the footsteps of other recent science-fiction projects to punch visually above their monetary weight (Sunshine, The Fountain). It was made for £30 million. At times that is quite difficult to believe, especially when gargantuan releases such as Transformers 2 regularly push the £200 million mark. Blomkamp’s history as a special-effects whizz has surely come into play here, and the team behind the visual effects in general deserves a pat on the back for creating a gritty aesthetic that almost universally belies any budgetary restrictions. Granted, there are some complex special effects shots, often involving many aliens, that perhaps suffer slightly, but in general the effects are largely invisible. The effects are helped by the documentary style in which much of the film is shot, with plenty of shaky-cam work that manages to be exciting rather than distracting. On the negative side, there are mild incongruity issues inherent within such a style; i.e. that a good portion of the action clearly takes place beyond the realms of any documentary cameramen, but this isn’t something you are likely to care about as long as the film is running.
The film kindly provides us, through the documentary style, with a number of possible continuations, and the story is left wide open for potential sequels. The film has performed extremely well at the time of writing, and will doubtless continue to do so, and so a sequel seems likely given today’s climate of flogging ideas for all they’re worth, however part of me hopes they refrain from making a sequel unless the story is worthy of the original. After all, one of District 9’s strongest aspects is its originality. It isn’t without fault (some rather stereotypical villains spring to mind), but it remains one of the best films of the summer and worthy of the ticket price.
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