Illegal aliens

District 9 is a surprisingly thoughtful sci-fi
actioner set in an extraterrestrial refugee camp

ACTION AND ALLEGORY: District 9

by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s been said before that while science fiction may be set in the tomorrow, it’s always really about today. Sci-fi tends to reflect the ideas and concerns of the moment, social, political and technological. Look at the two different flavours of paranoia in the ’50s and ’70s versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Cold War and post-Watergate, respectively, which illustrate how visions of the future are influenced by the reality of the present.

District 9, a new sci-fi film from South African-born (and Vancouver-residing) director Neill Blomkamp, wears its subject matter on its sleeve—I’m tempted to say it’s a very thinly veiled allegory, but the truth is, it’s not veiled at all. This is a movie about apartheid, refugee camps and forced relocation. At the same time, though, it’s also a very effective and creatively made action thriller. This is a rare thing, especially in a summer dominated by the venal, brainless, military suck-job that is the second Transformers movie. A movie that shows that it’s possible to have both a thoughtful, politically influenced premise and a guy in an alien robot suit shooting his way out of trouble is worth celebrating.

The film takes place some 20 years after an alien ship, full of dying, malnourished extra-terrestrials appears in the air over Johannesburg. Their origins, and the reason for the situation, is a mystery and their communication skills are poor—one character in the film hypothesizes that perhaps they’re an ill-educated worker caste abandoned, intentionally or not, by some sort of alien ruling class. To deal with them, the South African government sets up an area known as “District 9,” which eventually becomes the kind of impoverished, violent shanty township all too familiar from the country’s apartheid regime.

As the film begins, a multi-national corporation has been contracted by the government to relocate the aliens to new, concentration-camp-like surroundings further from the city. (The parallels to South Africa’s District 6, which was cleared of its black inhabitants during apartheid, are clear.) Leading the effort is the naïve and incompetent Wikus Van Der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), son-in-law of the company’s CEO. For the first half or so of the film, as he goes through District 9 with a clutch of soldiers and eviction notices, he seems like a hapless villain, a tool. But after an encounter with a bit of alien technology that starts to affect his physiology, he undergoes a radical transformation, both in body and character; it’s a big, but believable reversal.

Shot in a semi-documentary style that can be at times jarring (it always bothers me when filmmakers go fake-doc and then drop it to show the audience a crucial plot detail a doc crew would never have believably captured), District 9 nevertheless has a captivating directness. Copley, a feature first-timer, makes his character and his tricky journey believable.

Unsurprisingly for a film produced by Peter Jackson, the aliens and the special effects set pieces are both pretty great to watch. Despite sharing the same quadripedal basic body structure as human beings (why do movies never vary from this? Surely there must be a more creative way to create anthropomorphic but believable aliens), the aliens are suitably Other-ish, with their strange culture and reproductive rituals.

District 9 doesn’t present a particularly nuanced moral or argument, beyond “treat refugees like human beings, no matter who they are,” but it’s nice to see a sci-fi film that actually addresses issues of substance. That it’s a pretty exciting action film too means it’s a rare and laudable thing.

DISTRICT 9 OPENS THIS FRIDAY,
AUG. 14