Fiction at its best is allegorical, in that it harks back to something that feels familiar to us and holds some universal truth. This is the inherent beauty of science fiction. If done right, it allows us to clearly see the challenges we, as a human race, face. Think 1984 and Brave New World. Unfortunately, thanks to bad movie directors--you know who you are--who sacrifice story for a conglomeration of bad acting, overblown special effects, and the use of computer graphics for well, the sake of computer graphics, science fiction has developed a somewhat checkered past. We reached a point in the 90's when technology gave us the opportunity to share what, previously only our imaginations could conceive. This was a great thing for movies like Toy Story--the first CGI animated feature film that led us happily to The Incredibles--and a bad thing for movies like all three Star Wars prequels (Sorry, Lucas fans. They stink.).
No matter. Now we have films like District 9.
Set in modern-day Johannesburg, this film, directed and written by Neill Blomkamp (South African born), and Terri Tatchell, tells a story that feels all too familiar to us.
Blomkamp employs a documentary-style technique, opening with simulated news footage to set the scene. Through initial interviews, correspondents and Johannesburg locals reveal the story of District 9, a slum where alien refugees are trapped and exploited.
One of the things that makes this movie so great is that it makes us take a good, hard look at ourselves. What lies at the film's emotional center is the story of human nature. The frightened, ignorant, vengeful, jealous, angry, selfish side of human nature that leads us to advertently or inadvertently cause harm to ourselves and everything around us. We don't need to look very far back in our history to find evidence of this. What may first come to mind, due to the film's location, is 1960s apartheid, but there are countless other atrocities that race through one's mind as the plot unfolds. What I found myself hoping for, amidst all of the darkness this movie presents, and there is a lot of it, was the light.
We get a glimmer of it in the deeply flawed but likable character Wikus Van De Merwe who seems to be the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. As we watch Wikus make his way though this story, moving closer and closer to the side of the story's victims, we cringe over and over each time he falls due to his ignorance, his selfishness, and his vengefulness. This is where the writing really does its job because we hope against hope that Wikus will do the right thing.
Special effects in this film do what they're supposed to do. They serve to help tell a story that could not be told otherwise.
I don't think I'd be spoiling it for moviegoers to say that the ending is satisfying and the ride--at times almost too intense to take--is well worth the ticket price.
We can thank Peter Jackson for his involvement in this film. Without him, this movie may slipped off the radar. Here's hoping the success this movie has the potential to generate will lead to more great storytelling at the box office.
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