We'll start with the easy praise: the special effects. I can only think of one word to describe them: seamless. The CGI recalled for me the images created not long ago of a looming Death Star above San Francisco's bay area. The news footage could have been culled directly from some networks' stock footage rolls. The images of the huge alien spaceship hanging above Johanesberg were amazingly realisticl. The integration of new footage-type shots looked authentic. I know we live in an age of very ultra-real movie effects but there's a difference between something seeming to be real and something actually looking like it exists in the world. What this movie lacked was the subconscious sheen that most CGI has. I can almost always tell if something is CGI because there are subtle lighting hints. The CGI is too dark or too light or too shiny or too dull. It's the difference between Jabba the Hutt in Episode I and Jabba the Hutt in Episode VI. One of them is a rubber puppet existing on the set, and the other is a fully CGI creation amidst a sea of CGI creations. Even though the CGI Jabba moves more fluidly, the lethargic puppet seems more realistic because it "feels" visually like a real thing.
I never felt that the CGI in District 9 was CGI. (I mean I knew, but it never took me out of the story.) At one point I actually had to ask myself if there was some puppetry going on that I couldn't discern. [**mini spoiler**] At one point the main character, Wikus, ingests a fluid that starts to turn his body into an alien. It's hard to see a difference between the prosthetic arm that he wears and the CGI arms of the CGI aliens populating the movie. [**end mini spoiler**].
Here's a short synopsis of the story: An alien spaceship appears over the city of Johanesberg, South Africa and there are a lot of malnourished, injured aliens on board. People bring them down to earth and set up a ghetto of sorts for the million+ aliens to live in. Twenty years go by and no one has any idea what these aliens are doing here or why they can't go home. They're just living on earth and growing in numbers. People become hostile towards the aliens and want them gone. A relocation camp is set up for the aliens and a group of people go about getting the aliens to move to the new location. That's about it for basic premise. The head relocation chief, Wikus, ends up in the middle of the alien - human dispute and learns the hard way how the aliens are living and what the humans' views towards them really are. (The aliens have weaponry that is DNA-enabled, so humans can't use it, but they're constantly trying to figure out a way.)
What makes this story work and what makes the allegory work is that when you see the aliens living in these decrepit conditions you think to yourself, "Whatever, they are just creatures and I'm not moved by this imagery". I remember watching a scene of news footage with aliens rooting around in the garbage for scraps of edible material, fighting with each other for bits and pieces of trash, and I realized that what I was watching was no different than what a lot of people on this planet go through daily. I wasn't watching someone's idea of poverty, I was watching an example of reality. Maybe that means I'm slower than most, but it impressed me and disturbed me to figure out that if I had no problem seeing the aliens in these conditions then I had no problem seeing the "others" in the world in these conditions. Also, when I became bothered by seeing the aliens in those drab environments fighting for trash, I was also being bothered that this exact same thing was occurring on my planet.
[**SPOILER**]
The part of this movie that worked most for me was the very end, and I'm going to give it away right now. The protagonist, Wikus, fully turns into an alien. Visually he becomes no different than any other alien in the film. From that standpoint no human can distinguish him from the race of creatures they find despicable. Mentally, he is the same person that he was before, albeit without his innocence. He still yearns for his wife and his life the way it used to be. It proves a point: I can never know what someone in that position is thinking. They don't look like me, but we could be very much alike. I'll always be hung up on our differences, therefore neglecting to focus on our similarities. It seems obvious to say it, but since a story like this has never been told with the help of extra terrestrials as the device, it seems fresh and new to me.
[**END SPOILER**]
I also loved this movie because it was visceral and gritty. The special effects were seamless, as I've said, but they were also gory. I enjoyed the horror aspects to the story - laser guns that explode people's heads, mutating alien arms growing out of people, etc. District 9 was a great film from a sci-fi and from a political viewpoint. I feel I learned a lot about the politics of the South African region and about apartheid specifically. I was also treated to a great story with a vague ending that I can think about and determine for myself in any way I choose. The story is left open. You don't know if promises made will become promises kept, and the future of some characters is uncertain, but that's how it is right now in our lives with people in refugee camps and with the battles that are raging in these war-torn regions of the world. Their stories haven't ended yet, so it's fitting that the story in District 9 is left unfinished as well.
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