District 9 (2009)

Aliens coming to Earth is a common starting point for science fiction. But District 9 enters a different path at once by portraying those aliens not as invaders but as refugees. The place where the enormous mothership comes to a halt is not a great American city but the skies above Johannesburg, South Africa, and the alien species found within it lives quarantined in a slum, amid discrimination and contempt. Borrowing the shell of science fiction, this film poses head-on the uncomfortable question of how we treat the other. My rating is ★4.0.

What it’s about — Alien refugees quarantined and called prawns

Twenty-eight years after the alien ship arrived on Earth, the alien species that was inside it lives confined to District 9, a quarantine zone on the city’s outskirts. Humans call them prawns and despise them openly. Wikus (Sharlto Copley), an ordinary employee of a private military corporation, is directing an operation to forcibly relocate the aliens to another camp when he is exposed to an unidentified fluid. That accident becomes the trigger for his body to slowly begin to change, and he comes to experience firsthand the plight of the very beings he despised only yesterday. The film begins in the form of a mock documentary and gradually shifts into one man’s desperate tale of survival.

Direction — A lie-like realism granted by the fake documentary

So astonishing it is hard to believe it is Neill Blomkamp’s debut, this film’s direction is clever and solid. He begins the story with a fake documentary technique that mixes interviews, news footage, and CCTV video, granting a lie-like realism to the unreal premise of alien quarantine. The audience is sucked into the film under the illusion of watching the record of an actually reported event. After the midpoint the form gradually shifts into a traditional action film, but that transition is not awkward.

Despite a limited budget, the texture of the aliens, the ship, and the weapons never looks the least bit cheap. More impressive is that all of that technical achievement serves the story. It is used not as spectacle for spectacle’s sake but as a tool to make the audience experience the viewpoint of a discriminated-against being.

Performance — From a pathetic office worker to an object of pity

This film effectively rests on the shoulders of Sharlto Copley alone. Nearly unknown, he shows a remarkable range of change through the figure of Wikus. The early Wikus is somehow ridiculous and cowardly, an office worker so ordinary as to be pathetic. But in the process of his body changing and losing everything, he gradually turns into a figure who draws the audience’s pity. That flow, of an unheroic protagonist revealing his humanity amid desperation, Copley renders with a naturalness close to improvisation. The gap between the terror of being unable to accept his changing self and the choice he ultimately makes for the sake of another is the emotional core of this film.

What the film says — Empathy that arises only by standing in that place

The quarantine zone District 9 depicts is plainly a metaphor for reality. The contempt toward the aliens, the forced relocation, the inhuman experiments, reflect exactly the things humanity has done to the other throughout history. Through the unfamiliar being of the alien, the film shows how easily we abuse a target we have defined as not human. What is interesting is Wikus’s change. Until he is in that plight himself, he never once understands their suffering. In the end, the question this film poses is not about aliens but about ourselves, who cannot empathize without standing in another’s place.

Ratings & reception

The IMDb rating is 7.9 out of 10, a figure rarely high for the sci-fi genre. The Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer reaches 90 percent, and critics greatly praised it for seizing social message and entertainment at once. The Metacritic score is also a very high 81 out of 100. The fact that a low-budget debut went all the way to an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture proves that this film achieved something beyond a simple genre piece.

Verdict

That science fiction can be not merely an imagining of the future but a mirror reflecting the present, this film shows clearly. The realistic direction, Copley’s devoted performance, and a weighty thematic consciousness interlock in balance. A work that holds such sharp criticism of reality inside the shell of an alien film is rare. Because it possesses both the boldness and the polish of a debut, there is no hesitation in giving it four stars.

Recommended for

• Those who love science fiction carrying a social message
• Anyone who wants to experience the immersion of the fake documentary form
• Those who want to watch the change of an unheroic protagonist