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Film review: District 9

With so many science fiction ideas already explored you can’t really blame directors for sticking to the tried and trusted concepts which are sure to work and coming up with nothing particularly ground-breaking, and nothing particularly offensive, either. Using this philosophy as a yard-stick, District 9 (2009, directed by Neill Blomkamp) shouldn’t be nearly as good a film as it is: it has brutal, hostile aliens—like dozens of other films, of course—and it has a very large space-ship not dissimilar to the style already adopted in Independence Day. In other words, all the makings of yet another average science-fiction thriller.

So what makes District 9 so fresh and untouchable?

Well, to begin with it’s hard to put a finger on it but within minutes it becomes very clear.

The film opens strangely, comically even, almost like it’s intentionally trying to trip itself up, aware it’s attempting something it will struggle to pull off and wants to let the viewer know. Set in modern day South Africa, the events portrayed in the film were inspired directly by those which took place in District 6 in Cape Town, during the apartheid era.

The premise of the film is quickly revealed via news footage from handheld cameras and government staff: aliens have become stranded on Earth after a mysterious malfunction grounded the plane, leaving it hovering above the city with no way of leaving. Rioting has broken out between the aliens and the humans; the aliens have been quarantined in District 9, living in squalor, surrounded by racism. One man is in charge of moving the aliens—of which there are millions—to a new site, to cure the growing problem between those who belong, and those who are intruders.

Gory, alternating between fun one moment and deadly serious the next, District 9 is nearly all CGI, but somehow all thoroughly real. The acting is top notch, as is the plot, leading us through the murky world of deranged politics, into the mind of a normal man with everything to loose and time quickly running out.

More good news, I have just gotten paid for the image work that I did on those exhibition stands the other month. Turns out that James was right, and the purple was a major improvement.

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