Ever seen a student film with more energy, honesty, excitement and invention than a whole summer of conventional blockbusters? Ever been heartbroken they didn't have the budget to do it properly? In District 9, they had the budget.
An alien ship has come to rest over Johannesburg. Once people cut their way in they find they have a million starving alien refugees on their hands. None of their technology will work for us.
The unlikely hero of the film is Wikus. He is the disposable frontman for a militarised conglomerate that is controlling the ghetto. Caught between hard men and squalid, dangerous and expensive aliens, I fully expected this irritating corporate shill to die, horribly, five minutes in. No, the hero is Wikus: his life as squirming underdog trying to live with impossibly conflicting roles has given him a fierce spark. Once he trips an alien biological weapon that starts converting him into a prawn he sure needs it.
All of this makes District 9 sound like a facile spectacle-driven film. It isn't. It delivers action, but always in service to a story.
One of the delights of the movie is that you have to make your own guesses as to the nature of the aliens for the movie to make sense. My guesses are that almost all the aliens are not the shipbuilders. They are bioengineered soldiers: tough, powerful, aggressive and not to bright by design. Engineering needs civility: they aren't the creators of the ship.
The film is set after the tolerance and good will and aid money has been exhausted and darker impulses have taken over the locals attitude to the alien ghetto set up below the ship.
For me a key scene is the prawn haggling for goat heads, the human shopkeeper aiming a gun at his stomach and shouting for him to put the money down before taking the meat. This is business in District 9. The prawn's body language shouts to you that if the usurious shopkeep lowers gun for a second he will break what he needs to take that goat's head. They are thinking, feeling beings, but so close to dangerous animals they require force to deal with. From there is a slippery slope down to subjugation and abuse and boy do we go there.
<<Continued below>>
District 9, Part 1
Ever seen a student film with more energy, honesty, excitement and invention than a whole summer of conventional blockbusters? Ever been heartbroken they didn't have the budget to do it properly? In District 9, they had the budget.
An alien ship has come to rest over Johannesburg. Once people cut their way in they find they have a million starving alien refugees on their hands. None of their technology will work for us.
The unlikely hero of the film is Wikus. He is the disposable frontman for a militarised conglomerate that is controlling the ghetto. Caught between hard men and squalid, dangerous and expensive aliens, I fully expected this irritating corporate shill to die, horribly, five minutes in. No, the hero is Wikus: his life as squirming underdog trying to live with impossibly conflicting roles has given him a fierce spark. Once he trips an alien biological weapon that starts converting him into a prawn he sure needs it.
All of this makes District 9 sound like a facile spectacle-driven film. It isn't. It delivers action, but always in service to a story.
One of the delights of the movie is that you have to make your own guesses as to the nature of the aliens for the movie to make sense. My guesses are that almost all the aliens are not the shipbuilders. They are bioengineered soldiers: tough, powerful, aggressive and not to bright by design. Engineering needs civility: they aren't the creators of the ship.
The film is set after the tolerance and good will and aid money has been exhausted and darker impulses have taken over the locals attitude to the alien ghetto set up below the ship.
For me a key scene is the prawn haggling for goat heads, the human shopkeeper aiming a gun at his stomach and shouting for him to put the money down before taking the meat. This is business in District 9. The prawn's body language shouts to you that if the usurious shopkeep lowers gun for a second he will break what he needs to take that goat's head. They are thinking, feeling beings, but so close to dangerous animals they require force to deal with. From there is a slippery slope down to subjugation and abuse and boy do we go there. <<Continued below>>