Poignant Themes, Values, & Aesthetics

Rating: 9/10 (12 September 2009)

What critics are calling a "scathing social satire" in conjunction with what I will call a culturally well-informed platform, District 9 is an extremely intelligent vision that no doubt will spawn many intelligent conversations. The film surprisingly comes to us from first time director, Neill Blomkamp, who, despite his limited short-film repertoire, will most likely attract many eyes in future years.
Blomkamp gracefully employs a very raw, very visceral, docudrama style not much unlike the dust bowl feel of cinéma vérité. He takes it, however, several steps further by combining photorealistic CGI to gain the film's expressionistic quality, with shaky, hand-held documentary edges to expose more of its naturalistic elements. In this way, the film is uplifted with a highly chimerical imagination while simultaneously grounded in the grime of worldliness. Poetically speaking, it is both real and fake at the same time, or, as McKee puts it, it's a "fantasy-reality hybrid" of a film, which, in my view, makes the best of films. Also, as an added benefit, the form (though definitely not content) of the film was reminiscent of Tom Tykwer's Lola Rennt for those who deem themselves internationally savvy.
There's lots to consider in this one: xenophobic attitudes, government consolidation, immigration laws, unabridged intolerance, atoning foreign cultures and ideas, reconciling "separate but equal" amendments, scapegoating the many faces of otherness, the physics of entropy, war inebriation, evolutionary mutations, media manipulation, and the role reversals of friends and enemies to name a few. Though the film is not strictly immersed in philosophical thought—indeed, much of the action-packed sequences resemble an astronomically greater version of Transformers meets Starship Troopers—I will focus on a few of the film's subtextual philosophies that I found particularly timely.
Blomkamp plays the role of what I will call the "revelatory manipulator" quite flawlessly. He cleverly crafts the revelation—the drawing back of the curtain so to speak—of information to the audience that forces them into an ironic, self-reflective state of mind. For instance, the film opens with viewers most likely on the side of the humans as they infiltrate the negatively perceived, alien project homes. No doubt to this media spun projection, viewers will identify with their own kind: humans as the good guys, aliens as the bad guys. If we aren't careful though, we fall easily into this trap and are later reminded of the danger of segregated, binary thinking.
Using the ancient Greek logos and pathos storytelling devices, Blomkamp works on the audiences sensitivities by evoking sympathy for the aliens, much of which I believe worked. The tables turn and it is the human participants—those watching the film—who slowly begin to side with the alien paradigm, despising now their own kind. Another way of saying this is that those who watch the film are confronted with their own ugliness and self-destructive behaviors. To grasp this, however, we must sacrifice our need to be right simply because we're human, focus on being kind, and look beyond the sci-fi alien spectacle. Ironically, we're just as much alien as is the flower to the rock (intelligence not included of course).
The use of the concept 'alien,' not as some Ridley Scott, galactic creature, but as that which is foreign, weird, strange or scary, pervades the story, allowing us to ponder upon our own aliens in the attic. Blomkamp exposes our human frailties in such a remarkable way, essentially showing us that we don't have to build walls of separation, let alone fear the strange, if only we would seek understanding via candid communication and welcome that which is alien with loving, forgiving hands. Much of the film is riddled with politically charged atoms and secret mysteries of the human condition, and I believe it will best serve the public by being thoroughly talked about immediately after watching.
Spread the word.