A Film That Will Have You Thinking

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2010)

My friends have thought "District 9" was a bit melancholy and and hard to hold back the tears. Although I respect their feelings about the movie, I like to depend on my point of view by drawing out the good qualities and the qualities the could have used a little more improvement. What made my friends sickened most about "District 9" wasn't really the film itself, but how low humanity in cinema and society have been depicted as of late. Not the characters per say, but how our prejudices and discrimination have grown. As a society, we continually fight against each other for unnecessary purposes other than just for the sake of empowerment; just like the way the human characters were portrayed in battling the aliens in this movie. In agreement to my friends, I think their theory was true. Sure there were some humans in the movie who were fighting for the cause of protecting the aliens, but they were just the bottom of the demographics and their voices of opinion were null and void.
Set in the centerfold of human destruction of other humans, it comes to no surprise that South Africa was the obvious choice for this movie to take place. After all, this movie summarizes the wars we had with each other in the past. In South Africa, the defunct Apartheid Act which lasted for almost 50 years saw the Caucasian minority try to bring down the black majority through acts like segregation and whatnot. It also reflects on the wars in North America between the European settlers against the Native people and the African-Americans, or in Europe when the Nazis condemned the Jews in the Holocaust. The war between the humans and the aliens demonstrate on how despicable and uncaring we as humans had become then as as are now.
I can see why a lot of critics lambasted the way humanity was painted here. But you have to understand that they weren't doing it vainly to insult us, but just to show us our behavior tactics we have when encountering someone (or in this case something) that is different from all of us. That's why it may not be suitable for the sensitive audience.
Granted this movie is uber-violent and the F bombs are aplenty, but unlike some of those mindless summer flicks like "GI Joe" among others, "District 9" has an actual story and delivers a powerful message to the human race and gives us a wake-up call as to how evil we really are when we're at war with another group that isn't like us.
Last year in the theaters, every patron stayed in their seats. No one got up for popcorn or candy. Everyone stayed in their chair and watched the movie almost like they were in a church ceremony. I could give the excuse that with troubled economic stages in our life, the patrons decide to go frugal, or the tickets purchased were too expensive it left a hole in their wallets. But no I think they really were hooked into this movie ceremoniously.