Review: District 9

Posted by Harry in Film, Film Reviews | 2 comments

“When dealing with aliens, try to be polite, but firm. And always remember that a smile is cheaper than a bullet.”

District 9, Peter Jackson’s latest foray into cinema is hard to fault. It’s a film that tries something new, something different, to fantastic effect. District 9 takes a somewhat overused backstory, aliens arriving to earth and humans not liking this, but it creates an emotional, dramatic, glorious piece of pitch-perfect cinematography, that hits all the right notes and strikes all the right entertainment chords. District 9 is one of the rare films in the past decade that makes you leave the cinema feeling rewarded, as if every penny you spent on your cinema stub was worth it.

Today’s film industry has become more about the money than the passion for film-making, and there are only a small handful of directors nowadays who share the same passion that great directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, Ingmar Bergman and Steven Soderbergh have/had for film-making.

A few directors on par with the greats still remain – Steven Spielberg for instance, who used to make films because he enjoyed doing it, not because he felt he had to. His list of films is vast and enviable, but as of late, it seems he has fallen into the film industry pitfall of making films for the money rather than the reward of acclaim and universal enjoyment. Moviemaking has become more of a task, hard labour, as opposed to a hobby-like job. Money is slowly destroying the integrity of the film industry, where the definition of a film is less about the story development and narrative, but more about the actor familiarity and special effects, less about the emotion portrayals or shot styles, more about the profit margins and the monetary reward.

The Oscars seem irrelevant now, a novelty event that is staged just because it’s a long running tradition. Sure, directors,producers and actors are happy with the reward, but its true symbolic value is lost, the feeling of accomplishment replaced with a sense of superiority. Film awards are trophies that can be coveted in your house symbolising achievement, but they have become more ornamental, with less significance than they once had.

So when Peter Jackson finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and grabbed a whole array of awards for his work, I felt that he, unlike the mass majority of directors out there, actually revelled in the success, as if he truly felt that his hard work and effort into producing the trilogy was meaningful. And it was, to a certain extent. The films were brilliant, and his directing style and choices were clinical to the success. Peter Jackson is a man to be admired in the film industry, making a name for himself, but not trying to draw the limelight on himself.

With eager anticipation, I awaited the release of District 9. I know that Peter Jackson is the producer, with Neill Blomkamp as director, a rookie to feature film direction, but I know Peter’s presence during the film making will have been there. District 9 is Blomkamp’s first feature film, so Jackson will no doubt have jumped in and given him advice and his knowledge along the way.

With District 9 being a low-budget, feature length adaptation of one of Blomkamp’s earlier short films, I was excited. Amongst the mass of Hollywood films being spurted out onto the big screens, GI Joe, Transformers 2, Ice Age 3 and G-Force to name but a few, District 9 along with Inglourious Basterds were drawing my attention. I like my films to draw me in, to make me feel involved in the story, to keep me engrossed. I favor story over special effects, charisma over cash, passion over profit. Independent cinema and foreign films give me this well enough, but something about District 9 appealed to me more so. It had what I was looking for: the right name backing it, unfamiliar actors who were hand-picked because they could act brilliantly, not because they looked brilliant, an unfamiliar director who wanted to prove himself as a film director as opposed to a moneymaker. Most importantly though, it had a low budget. That stood out for me: low budget meant that the film would use every bit of money to full effect. Having a $150 million budget means you can do whatever you like. Having a $30 million budget meant that you have to be meticulous with the detail.

District 9 is for me the perfect blend of Hollywood influence and independent cinema.

District 9 is based around a large alien spaceship coming to Earth, and stopping above Johannesburg in 1982. When soldiers make their way into the ship, they discover bug-like aliens, who they label as “prawns”. The government make the mass of aliens aboard the ship live in a government camp labeled “District 9″. Over the 20 years, the prawns are forced to live in poverty, whilst the government work on moving them to District 10, an updated government camp.

What I like about this story is that under the surface, a lot of connotations appear, namely in the form of showing the segregation in humanity and the living conditions within South Africa. It shows a realistic portrayal of human reaction to these events, and it depicts brilliantly what is as close to a believable alien storyline as you may ever get.

An organisation is set up, named MNU (Multinational United), they are in control of District 9 and the alien “problem”. One of their agents, Wikus van der Merwe, is in charge of the relocation. Whilst working, he discovers something, and the following events change his life forever.

But what makes the story flow is the way you engage with the characters. One of the staff pointed out how van der Merwe is a very negative lead character, but I see him as the anti-hero. You see cruelty towards the prawns, as they are treated inhumanely. The humans argue that they aren’t human, they are animal like, and what some people observed is that this connotes somewhat with the apartheid years. I can see the connection, and I feel that the film has more than meets the eye. It opens you to true human emotions fantastically, and with the story being a little too extraordinary at times, Blomkamp still manages to keep you fully engaged in the narrative with brilliant character development and emotional struggles and enigmas.

I see van der Merwe as the anti-hero, the agent misled by his ruthless boss. van der Merwe cares about his wife, he wants his relationship to work, and throughout the film, you see him in a vulnerable state, as his personal struggles and problems that arise conflict with his relationship. He’s a great depiction of a realistic humanity: he has a slight killer instinct, with an air of arrogance. He’s power-hungry, wanting to move up the food chain, but he has to manage his relationship with his wife also. And when he hits the turning point of the film, from there, he becomes even more relatable, more connect-able.

District 9 is engrossing, enthralling and definitely a film that should be seen. While its violence can be a little unnecessary, and its subplots a little shady at times, what is does well, is does incredibly well. The main prawn which the film focuses on is portrayed with human characteristics, creating an audience bond which is unexpected. The film’s twists and turns are placed perfectly, each shift well mapped out, each event co-ordinated and blended beautifully to create an incredibly well flowing movie.

It’s very hard to fault this film, because it does very little wrong. It’s the kind of film that some might not like because of its emotional issues mixed with scenes of gore and violence. It plays with your mind a little, emotions running high, and a couple of scenes can be distressing to those not prepared for them.

The special effects are top-notch, every inch of detail in the film perfected. Everything looks amazing, and while that’s not why I loved the film, it certainly helped. The scenes with the spaceship are stunning on the big screen, and the aliens look very real.

But what I truly enjoyed was the way the film engaged you. It was the first time I’ve left a cinema with a feeling of pure enjoyment. I had absorbed the story and was left feeling truly emotional. Not brought to tears though, as I’ve never been by any film, but for people who engaged with the film as much as I did and have more tendency to shed a tear, you may do here.

Overall, if I was to pick a film of the year, out of every single film I’ve watched this year, District 9 would be in my top 3, if not the top film. It’s powerful, engrossing and absolutely fantastic. The sheer number of descriptive words I’ve used here may show my feelings about this. It’s hard to describe just how great this film is.

What Blomkamp and Jackson have managed to do is take a minimal budget, and produce a film that tops any film with five times the money.  It makes full use of every penny, and you can see this. Whether you like films or not, watch this. Its politics are strong, and its connotations are in the masses, but seriously, District 9 is just glorious. Absolutely glorious.

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