Monika’s Pensieve

{FILM DIARY}

District 9 (USA/New Zealand, 2009)

Seen: Wednesday, 21st October 2009 (cinema)
Runtime: 112′
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley
Production House: TriStar Pictures, , Block / Hanson, QED International, WingNut Films, Key Creatives
Plot: (from imdb)

An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology.

Scene From The Film
See it here.

Impressions In Short
Hands down, the weirdest alien movie I’ve ever seen *grin*

More About the Film
There were a couple of very strange things about this movie… Firstly, this is probably the only time I’ve seen an alien film where it’s the human race that is stronger than the aliens and where humans are the abusers. That whole ghetto/racism subplot was brilliant.
Secondly, Wikus is the most unlikely leading character in a commercial film. Films tend to feature exaggerated geeky nerd types as the comic relief. I don’t think I’ve seen a film which had a character like that as the lead before. Having somebody like that as your leading man in an action/sci-fi movie is rather ground breaking *grin*
Something that has been done before, although it’s still far from being common, is stylizing it as a documentary. That was pretty bold too I thought.
And then there’s the fact that it’s an American produced movie about aliens and the UFO lands in Johannesburg, South Africa - how cool is that? ;)
I also loved that the lead alien character in the movie was called Christopher. Somehow this never stopped amusing me.
On the downside, I felt the movie got a bit too much into the explosions and stuff. I thought that got a bit boring, but hey I’m a girl, so I’m not supposed to get that sort of stuff I guess ;)
The other thing that was a bit off-putting was how poor the character development was. The plot was quite developed, but the characters not at all. Wikus was just about the only character in the film that had a good amount of characterization and context. Everyone else was very bland. This was particularly annoying in the case of Christopher, the alien, who actually got quite a lot of screen time. The sole bit of character development he got (and that worked very well) was that he had a son, which he cared for a lot. That sort of humanized him. But we got practically no other context for him. After me and Kin left the cinema we found we had a whole lot of questions about Christopher and the alien race which hadn’t even been asked, let alone answered in the film. How did Christopher fit into the alien population? He was different in some ways, certainly, so why was that? How come he seemed to know more about alien technology than the other aliens did? Is single parenting normal amongst aliens or had his “wife” died? Did the aliens have some sort of class system or no? If yes, where did Christopher fit into it? How come he had a friend in some sort of gang?
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a sequel and if we get some of those questions answered.

Recommended?
I think that for a big action or sci-fi fan this is an absolute must see. Others would probably find it intriguing, but I’m not sure how enjoyable (I’m still not sure how much I enjoyed the film - I’m just glad I saw it because it was so weird ;)).