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The political and historical issues are interesting and handled with thought. Director Neil Blomkamp grew up through these very times. It shows in the film, which is genuine and entertaining. I really liked the way "documentary" and "news" footage was worked into the film language at the beginning of the movie. This was the strongest part of the 90 minutes, and drew me in. Structurally, it fades into general summertime fare with fighting and explosions, and also includes a worthless love subplot, which is either lazy writing or evidence of compromised vision. A more soulful, inward hero's quest would have worked better thematically, since it loosely parallels Kafka's Metamorphosis.
Alien movies are not about aliens. They are always about us. Extra-terrestrials probably exist. There is too much out there to suppose it improbable. But human thinkers and creators cannot tell a story about extra-terrestrials because it is simply not in the realm of our reality. We have only our imaginations, which run wonderfully wild! In Alien, a gruesome, curious creature erupts from the abdomen of a man. It is man's own subconscious demons, manifested in a stomach ache, a birth, a grotesque death. Later in that film, Sigourney Weaver discovers a fully grown alien beast inside her own chamber. It feels a lot like a Lynchian moment, because Alien and Twin Peaks, for example, both come from a similar imaginative space, wherein our own demons and fears and curiosities haunt us, and their appearance in our actual reality is delightfully frightening.
Even more typical Hollywood fare, which often turns such insights into base commodities and cheap thrills for the masses, use aliens similarly. Independence Day is essentially a film about American bravado and how our football-fandom complex is strong enough to suppress the scary, invasive and prurient thoughts that might attack us. It celebrates our ability to perhaps overcome all that is truly scary about the unknown. Close Encounters of the Third Kind approaches these subconscious mysteries with greater wonder. The Day the Earth Stood Still employs aliens as a sort of benevolent dictatorship over our own behaviors.
Ultimately, an alien film can be judged by the way in which it treats the all-powerful wave of the mysterious human condition. District 9 is not unique in doing the same, but it does make it more explicit. Clearly, we understand here that the aliens are us, and we are them. An alien force within all of us, individually and collectively; instead of that force antagonizing and threatening us, we threaten it. We expel it. Get it away! Kill it! It's evil! It's true: it is evil, because our consciousness makes it evil. But it's also good. Everything is everything.
Blomkamp sentimentalizes the lead aliens to prove this point. Even our base desires have humanity in them. A murderer is capable of love. A priest is capable of sodomy. Et cetera. Unfortunately, the big ideas that I'm expressing here get muddled and lost in the looking glass by clumsy filmmaking that remove us from this zen point of view. As soon as the main arch of the film is triggered, we are given a bland and predictable series of inevitable events: Wikus must escape, he must reach out to his wife, he must befriend Christopher Johnson (a great pun at renaming aliens), he must break in to MNU, guns blazing! When Blompkamp settles in to this very familiar structure, most of his talent and insight vanishes, and we are left with tired movie clichés.
The cliché I want to single out is that of the averted death by way of unnecessary dialogue by a stupid bad guy. The primary "villain" in District 9 is an aggressive MNU soldier out to hunt down the aliens with a a shoot-first attitude, who then turns to hunt down Wikus. This character has at least three opportunities to get his man, and every time, he says something to the effect of "I've been looking forward to this" or "Time to do what I should have done long ago". And every time, the camera cuts to a new angle and something saves the day - a stray bullet knocks away his gun or something. This same thing happens when the illegal weapons dealer is about to kill Wikus too. Basically, Wikus's life is saved by forced luck. I don't believe for a second that he would survive all of this. It is also absurd that our hero would not conversely kill the primary enemy. He kills plenty of people, but refrains every time on the main nemesis, as if he wouldn't hurt a fly. We know he would - his selective pacifism is unfounded. Ultimately, the MNU officer is killed by the aliens, who rip off his limbs as a group. The way of his death is obviously significant, but feels forced.
Another filmic device used for convenience regards the issue of language and communication. The aliens speak in a click-clacky language that might resemble that of an African tribe. Somehow, humans can understand this dialect rather easily. The biblical story of Babel illustrates how our species is unable to harmonize and unify because of the many tongues bestowed on us by god, who did so to prevent a giant tower to heaven from being built by all the people of earth. The end of District 9 shows an ascent to the spaceship that feels a lot like that fictional tower. And the ascent was indeed made possible by the effective communication between humans and aliens. In a way, this is a profound message that I've teased out. But while watching, I was annoyed by the laziness with which it was brought out. Perhaps there simply isn't enough time to explain everything within a film.
I have two more issues to discuss. The first regards the body. A lot has been written about what might be known as "meat hell", or the trapped physical condition of our lives. It is the bestial quality that thwarts our desire to be pure celestial spirits. The oeuvre of David Cronenberg exemplifies this train of thought. It is integral to District 9, as so much has to do with physiognomy. If our bodies to betray us, are we still human? If we consume the body of something else, do we become that energy in some way? There is much to consider here regarding our lives as omnivores, as aging muscle and bone, as sensorial creatures.
At last, let us consider some of some things I've mentioned thus far: the political and historical references, the weapons warlord, the consuming of bodies... There are two major entities that must be mentioned: MNU (Multi-National United) is the Orwellian/Industrial-American archetype that oversees all alien management, and is primarily interested in turning their weapons into profit (of course). This is cut and dry: a well-crafted way to speak of corporate rule. The other entity is that of a gang of Africans that run an underground market in the slums. They sell the aliens cat food, which is equivalent to drugs and junk food that pervade most impoverished communities. They also collect weapons - like MNU - in search not for billions, but for superpowers. The kingpin of this gang is taught by a sort of shaman that if he eats an alien, he will gain his powers.
The issue at hand regards the all-too-delicate issue of race politics. The movie has alienated its share. Is it racist to depict Africans - Nigerians in particular - as gangsters? I wonder, if this movie has erred in its treatment of a people or issue, what would have been more appropriate? It is a very tricky thing, to depict a truth as one sees it, without stepping on the perspectives of others.
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