Review

Review Date: 16-August-09
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Juicy

District 9 (2009)

December's Nelson Mandela biopic Invictus can gun for an Oscar, but the award for the year's best movie set in South Africa may already be clinched by District 9. This sci-fi thriller from newcomer Neill Blomkamp proves that meaningful, time-tested tales can be told in fresh and exciting ways. The movie is a statement about humanity, illustrated by one man who finds it by ceasing to be human.

Bucking Hollywood's fascination with UFOs and the discovery that we are not alone, District 9 opens 20 years after the first spaceship arrived on Earth. It hovers like a hunk of scrap metal over Johannesburg, part of the skyline and of little interest to anyone. Its sickly crew was brought down to a camp outside the city in an act of apparent welcome, but over the years the camp has become a ghetto and its inhabitants anathema to the human population. Derogatorily called "prawns" because of their shelled and ridgy bodies, the aliens are starved, attacked, and exploited by both a government-sponsored arms manufacturer and a band of Nigerian hoodlums, neither of whom have succeeded in getting the alien weapons to work. So much we learn from newsreel-like footage which works perfectly within the film.

Enter the hero of the piece, or rather the man who becomes a hero the hard way. Wikus van de Merwe is a geek who works for the arms manufacturer and accepts the subjugation of the outsiders without question. (He is played by Sharlto Copley, another impressive newcomer.) A bit of nepotism puts him in charge of the aliens' removal to a distant second camp where their abuse and extermination will not generate so much press. While cheerfully going about the business of forced eviction (he arrives at District 9 with a smile and battalion of soldiers), Wikus is accidentally contaminated by a fluid which one of the aliens concocted in a laboratory beneath its shack. He begins to morph into a prawn.

Wikus' physical transformation is not the crux of the matter, however. As soon as his problem is known to fellow humans he crosses the line between the smug wielders of the upper hand and the powerless victims of oppression. This transformation, like the other, is not his choice, but becoming oppressed never is. Running for his life, he is forced to hide out in District 9 and engage the alien who created the fluid as an individual with emotions and hopes (and offspring) of its own. The violent crusade on which they embark awakens Wikus' compassion. This represents a small but potent victory which, I note with pleasure, leaves an opening for a sequel. Men have been dooming each other to places like District 9 for centuries. Perhaps the influence of another species in the universe is needed to make us (or some of us) evolve into something higher.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.