Alienating

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2009)

District 9 makes no apologies for being a straight-forward heavy-handed allegory for South African apartheid, hence the probability of a malfunctioning extraterrestrial mothership that just so happens to appear hovering in the skies over Johannesburg of all places on Earth and marooning a non-human race of aliens which are quickly given the derogatory slur "Prawn" because of their resemblance in appearance to our planet's indigenous crustaceans and are quickly "relocated" to District 9's shantytowns and slums as history begins to inevitably repeat itself. The film starts off as a mockumentary with realistic brilliance and abruptly shifts gears toward a conventional plot-driven science fiction story that recalls sociological themes of racial prejudice explored in past science fiction films like Alien Nation and Enemy Mine. There really aren't any likable humans in this film at all, not even the "anti-hero" Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) who comes off as a complete bureaucratic tool only interested in (literally) saving his own skin... and that's really the whole point, isn't it? That from an alien's point-of-view their impression of the human race is predominately a vile, greedy, despicably self-serving species whose only objective is profiting from the knowledge and technological "acquisitions" that contact with an advanced alien race might bring us and Director Neill Blomkamp explores these shameful and seemingly unredemptive human characteristics with profound existential brilliance.
The "Prawns" are the most "alien" looking aliens in cinema this side of H.R. Giger's Alien or Stan Winston's Predator and refreshingly features some of the best use of seamlessly integrated CGI seen in cinema in recent years. The more un-human they appear only heightens our fears and anxieties to their seemingly non-hostile intentions and tendencies towards racial animosity. They communicate to us only through a strange audible clicking sound that constitutes their linguistic structure similar to the native South African Bantu and the apparent semantic language differences, cultural customs and communication barriers rapidly deteriorate any hope for peaceful coexistence between our species. For example, the Prawns don't understand legal jargon like "eviction" making their ignorance to our common laws easy targets for bureaucratic exploitation and authoritarian subjugation.
It would be interesting to see if the Prawn who identifies himself only as Christopher Johnson would keep his promise to Wikus. After all the deplorable things we did to his kind though why should he? Perhaps that is what ultimately separates them from us and in spite of his race being cruelly segregated, brutally tortured and inhumanly experimented on comes back in three years to District 10 to free his people and help poor Wikus out of moral sympathy and compassion, universal traits that are seemingly lost upon the native human inhabitants of this alienating planet.