..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp

The mockumentary-style opening sequence of District 9 catches us up quickly to where the storyline kicks off: two decades ago, an alien craft appeared in the sky over Johannesburg, South Africa and hovered there. When military forces finally cut their way into the ship, they found a million or so giant prawn-like aliens inside dying and suffering from malnutrition, with a broken ship that wouldn't get them back home.

The sharply crafted script, co-written by South African director Neill Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell (with Peter Jackson producing) , explores the line between humanity and inhumanity and asks us to consider how we would respond to the necessity of providing humanitarian aid to a million alien beings.
These questions have been pondered in other works of science fiction (in particular, elements of District 9 reminded me strongly of Enemy Mine and the excellent TV series Alien Nation), but they haven't always been explored this thoughtfully or executed with so much raw power.

It's really not much of a stretch to think that, should a situation like that presented in District 9 actually happen, events would play out closely to what the writers posit here: an alien race segregated into a concentration-camp like ghetto; criminal elements and governments seeking to exploit advanced technology and weaponry for their own gain; greed and the convenient compartmentalizing of ethics allowing inhumane things to happen in the name of research and money. Questions of morality and humanity are further magnified when an inept government bureaucrat (newcomer Sharlto Copley, excellent here) is accidentally exposed to the aliens' biotechnology, further blurring issues that are already more shades of grey than black and white.

The horrors that take place in the film are further emphasized by setting the film in South Africa, which for nearly five decades lived under apartheid with the majority black population oppressed by the white minority, and it's not much of a stretch to see District 9 as allegorical to our own tendency to value most that which resembles what we see when we look in the mirror. Do we spend all our resources addressing issues of education, poverty and social reform within our own borders, especially in a tough economic climate? Or do we have a moral obligation to allocate a portion of our resources to helping other human beings, even those who differ from us with the color of their skin, their social structure, or the continent -- or planet -- on which they happen to have been born? 

District 9 challenges us to ask ourselves tough questions, though it doesn't necessarily offer answers we might like to hear. I wouldn't quite characterize it as agitprop, but if you look at the events that unfold onscreen and walk out thinking, "That would never happen that way," you're either wearing some serious blinders about the potential of the human race to commit atrocities, or you've not paid much attention to your world history. District 9 shock-and-awes us with a peek beneath the surface of our moral certainty and superiority. Are these the choices we would make? Is this the way in which we would live our professed values, reveal our humanity to another race from a distant world?

And yet, for all that this film is smart and relevant and thought-provoking, the filmmakers somehow manage to avoid beating the audience too broadly about the head and shoulders with the heavier issues beneath all the action. While you're watching District 9 things are so engaging and move so quickly that all you can do is raptly focus on what's happening on the screen in front of you; it's later, as you ponder and discuss the film, that deeper issues creep to the surface. This is an intelligent and politically relevant film, yes. But it's also just a kick-ass sci-fi film that engages your senses, even as it challenges you to question your sensibilities.



-by Kim Voynar

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