Christmas Eve: Moon
Day After Christmas: District 9.
District 9 is another science fiction movie that I let fall off the radar. On at least three separate occasions I almost might have seen it. After striking out, I let it fall by the wayside.
It’s a gruesome bit of work, but probably the most intelligent ‘alien’ film to come…ever? It’s certainly a far cry from Independence Day, Men in Black (the first was actually somewhat clever), or the wretched Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds.
District 9 is a ‘documentary film’. It follows Wikus van de Merwe, a low-level beurocrat responsible for moving a prison camp of aliens, called prawns, from one district to another. Twenty years prior the alien invaders landed above Johannesburg, South Africa. They were removed from their floating spacecraft and placed in camps, which have become crime-filled and unruly.
District 9 is as much a criticism of privatization and apartheid as it is an ‘alien’ film. It is an immensely difficult film to watch, but for all the right reasons. Wikus van de Merwe has his life thrown to pieces over the course of a short, but frenziedly two hours. It is bloody and gruesome, but its one of the few films where I think that gore is actually necessary. It makes Wikus’ trials all the more powerful and the conclusion that much more relevant.
Again, I want to avoid giving away too much, but it’s not an invasion film, it’s not gun-porn, it’s not a touchy-feely allegory, or an action film. It is a film with aliens, but it is not a film about aliens. The closest approximation would be a film about humans might treat aliens, or really how we treat anyone, ourselves included.
For being a fairly low budget affair, the imagery is phenomenal. The spaceship…looks like a spaceship. The aliens are slightly, ever so slightly, cartoonish, but only a little bit. The characters beyond Wikus don’t have much screen time and they’re all basically heartless bastards, but anything more complex in the way of villainy would have required a novel, not a film.
It’s a film supposedly awaiting a sequel, but it I’m not sure it’s necessary. It’s poignant and startling, similar to Moon in that regard, and another title on my list of Science Fiction movies that aren’t trash.
