It’s not often you have original vision and great storytelling.
We saw it when Peter Jackson took on the mammoth task of bringing all the Tolkien books to the screen.
No surprises then, that Jackson has helped first-time filmmaker Neill Blomkamp realise his grim vision for the innovative new feature District 9.
Grim because this film is an interesting take on Blomkamp’s memory of growing up in South Africa. What Blomkamp has made is, as the production notes glibly state, “the world’s first autobiographical alien apartheid movie”.
The South Africa of District 9 is not far removed from the South Africa of the not-too-distant past — instead of a black South African “problem” there’s an alien one.
The aliens, or “prawns” as they are euphemistically referred to, landed on earth 20 years earlier and humanity didn’t know what to do with them. With a disabled mother ship and no way of surviving, they were housed in a Soweto-like slum called District 9.
When multinational company MNU wants them relocated and their many weapons removed, rioting and other violence takes place.
Soon MNU must send in an envoy to personally give the aliens their relocation orders while MNU attempts to activate the alien technology.
Shot in documentary style, the film focuses on Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), on his most important day as he must personally see 1.8 million aliens moved to their new homes.
What Wikus doesn’t anticipate is that one illegal alien has collected something that will put him in the firing line.
Considering the small budget, special effects are sophisticated and impressive. But the film does start to fray around the edges in the last third, with leaps in logic and frequent “breaking the fourth wall” when the it randomly goes in and out of the documentary style.
It also suffers from taking well-worn Hollywood clichés to close off some narrative threads and throwing frenetic action and gore at the screen in a frenzy of fast cuts and blood-soaked lenses.
Be warned: this is very intense. But as a potent allegory for the problems in South Africa this is an imaginative and important piece of filmmaking.
ADRIAN DRAYTON (Reviews first published in Insights magazine)
Discussion Questions 1. What does it mean to be human? Do the biblical commands to love others extend to non-humans? It's easy to watch District 9 and think we'd treat these aliens better, but would we?
2. What revelations about our world does seeing this imaginary world provide you?
3. Why is the human condition so prone to hating "the other"—whoever is not like us? What is at the heart of that trait?
Watch the trailer and clips from DISTRICT 9
Watch the short film that District 9 was based on ALIVE IN JOBURG
film review
District 9 
