District 9

The fact that District 9 was is the first feature film of 31-year-old Neill Blomkamp is remarkable, but it also helps explain some of the film's flaws. Blomkamp uses the interesting (if slightly lazy) device of recounting the film's events through mock-documentary interviews. Several sociologists relate how in 1982, a large spacecraft arrived in the airspace over Johannesburg, South Africa. After a three-month period in which no movement is made, the South African authorities break into the craft and discover an alien species. The aliens are brought to terra firma and made to live in a shantytown-like area called District 9. After twenty years, both the white and black South African have become increasingly tired of the alien beings (or "prawns", the derogatory nickname they are given) and are desirous of their removal to a different, more remote area called, of course, District 10. The South African government outsources the removal of the prawns to a private company called Multi-National United, or the MNU. The MNU has a clear disregard for the aliens as well as public relations. The man tasked with the eviction is the colossally insensitive Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a white Afrikaner. Wikus excitedly plays to the cameras as he bounces from one filth-laden shelter to the next, demanding the aliens signatures on their eviction notices. When he doesn't get the response he desires, Wikus directs his foot soldiers to callously beat or kill the alien in question. Wikus and his thugs soon encounter an intelligent prawn named Christopher Johnson and his small son. While ransacking Christopher's domicile, Wikus discovers a receptacle filled with black liquid which he accidentally sprays in his face. It soon becomes clear that he has been infected by the liquid which is the juice that powers all prawn technology, technology which only a prawn can operate. While at the hospital, Wikus realizes that he is transforming into a prawn. His higher-ups at MNU know that they can harvest Wikus' organs to gain control of prawn weaponry, representing billions of dollars to their corporation. As Wikus sees himself becoming an alien, he begins to empathize more and more with the plight of the prawns.
Director and writer Blomkamp is himself a white South African who immigrated to Canada at age eighteen. It is fair to say that Blomkamp knows a thing or two about being both oppressor and alien. He also brings his considerable 3-D animation and visual effects experience to District 9, and the film is the better for it. The story is interesting and engaging, but the blunt tool Blomkamp uses to get his point across is painfully transparent. MNU is a crude Blackwater substitute, and it's bosses and employees make obvious stand-in's for either Apartheid Afrikaners, or Coalition Forces in Iraq. Meanwhile the nickname "prawn", meant to conjure up any manner of racial epithets, did nothing but make me hungry. District 9 does not belong on the Best Picture list but it does belong on the box office toppers list as it has to date grossed over $204,000,000 worldwide. I can't help but think that the Academy must really want to pull more viewers by nominating popular films. Blomkamp has a bright future ahead of him, especially if he can refine his writing to match his competency in directing. I appreciated the transformation that Wikus undergoes and my Comment has to do with understanding someone once you walk a mile in their shoes. A few years back, an acquaintance told me that people without children simply didn't understand what life with a child meant. I did not have any children at that point and I wanted to brass knuckle his arrogant face. I have a daughter now and I absolutely get what he meant (don't get me wrong, the guy is still a jackass). I have always found it both easy and pleasurable to denigrate somebody I deemed stupid, vain, arrogant or rude. But lately I keep coming back to F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose Nick Carraway quotes his father as saying "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had". When I read Gatsby in high school for the first time, I paid little if any attention to this sentiment. Later I paid attention, but chose to ignore it. Now I endeavor to abide by it because it's the right way in which to behave. Neill Blomkamp's message, if somewhat heavy-handed, seems to be a variation on this theme.