Review: Taking you to a new district

District 9
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Screenplay: Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
Cast: Sharlto Copley, David James and Jason Cope
Rating: *** 1/2

There has been the occasional ET, but other than that, you can’t be faulted for hating extra-terrestrials (whether they show up or not). After all, they are here to “take over earth”; aren’t they?

District 9 comes up with a novel premise. And if one may allow, turns the sci-fi alien genre theme completely on its head (to emphasise my point, one would not have to go back further than the weeks-old Transformers 2).

The question here is not what they would do to us, but what we would do to them. In the film, a large alien mother ship appears over Johannesburg. When a mission to the ship is undertaken, about a million sick and malnourished aliens are found in it.

A huge resettlement programme is drawn up and the aliens are settled in District 9. But they are exploited by local gangsters and an organisation named, not too subtly, MNU (Multi National United), for their ability to make advanced machinery. And then a resettlement programme to District 10 is drawn, because people want them as far away as possible.

The plot is novel, and the allegories, captivating. The setting of District 9 in Johannesburg is unmistakable. Director Neill Blomkamp (a South African who has moved to Canada) captures and focuses on a race relegated to squalor and exploitation by another effortlessly, so much so that one feels for these antennae-bearing, insect-like aliens.

Their population blows up from a million to 1.9 million in 20 years, and no one really cares. They are viewed with suspicion and xenophobic hostility by people. No one is innocent here, not the people, not the gangsters who want their weapons and who eat their body-parts thinking they cure illnesses, and not the MNCs who want their weapons.

They are derogatorily named "prawns" for their crustacean-like appearance and tentacles that wiggle when they speak in gurgles. In fact, as the plot unravels, one gets to know of a horrific genocidal research which wants to harvest their abilities from these aliens. The aliens are to be moved to another settlement, which is nothing less than a concentration camp.

There is liberal use of news and CCTV footage and documentary-like interviews throughout the movie. All this, undoubtedly, to make it appear authentic. And it works. The hand-held cameras and editing are top-notch. What comes out of all this is a very believable and moving tale of a species trapped in a slum-like environment, created to derive maximum usage from them.

Protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is an edgy, nervous official in-charge of the eviction programme (not to be mistaken for someone sympathetic to the aliens). He comes into contact with a particular fuel that is being developed by the aliens, as a result of which he slowly starts metamorphosing into an alien himself.

His portrayal of the character, slowly transforming, being ostracised and used, is fantastic, and in terms of pure acting, often reminiscent of Jeff Goldblum’s fantastic performance in The Fly. It is speaking that the person who will redeem the human race’s morality is not the strongest, but a meek pen-pusher from the dominant race.

What does or can put off a few is the action in the second half. It is spell-binding, but the fact that this film had to resort to action, is a tad disappointing. An inter-galactic friendship is formed between van de Merwe and the alien Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope), where the two blast into MNU’s office to recover the fuel that will help Johnson return home. In the end, Johnson actually looks at van de Merwe and tells him, “I will be back for you.”

Other than the momentary need to conform, the film is smart, thought-provoking, crisp and delightfully entertaining.