District 9 (Neill Blomkamp 2009)
Posted on September 03 at 13.51, 2009 by Eric Mahleb
I had the pleasure of watching the German premiere of District 9 as part of the Berlin Fantasy Film Festival. It is not often that a Sci-Fi film rises above the ocean of mediocrity that plagues the genre so when it does happen, it is worth praising it.
District 9 is the debut film of Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson’s 29 years old protege. An action flick with a heart and a bit of social critic, the film revolves around issues of intergration between the residents of Johannesburg and a community of weakened Alien creatures that landed on Earth 20 years earlier and were forced to live in the slums of the South African city.
Made on what is today a fairly modest budget of $30 million, District 9 feels much bigger and better than most sci-fi films that cost two or three times that amount. The 600 visual effect shots are for the most part splendid and the level of detail impressive. Add to this some quality acting (Sharlto Copley is a lot of fun to watch), solid directing on the part of a young and ‘in’experienced director and a cinema verite documentary style of filming that is effective in building a sense of the real in the film while covering up nicely for potential errors, and you have a cult favorite in the making.
Yet, it is not the masterpiece that many have talked about. A few inconsistencies and one major (in my opinion) gap in the storyline prevent it from becoming already one of the best Sci-Fi films ever. Attention Spoilers Ahead. I am referring to the liquid that allows for the shuttle to return to the ship. I found it a bit of a stretch that this liquid also happens to turn a human into an alien through inhalation. Perhaps there was a good explanation for it in the film and i missed it. In which case i would need to edit this blog entry at a later date. In the meantime, i was a bit disappointed that they could not find a better way to handle the transition between the two ‘halves’ of the film. I also picked up a few other things, albeit small, which made me realize that the film still felt a tad amateurish at times. For this reason, it certaintly should not be discussed in the same vein as 2001 or Blade Runner or Alien…
But perhaps time will prove me wrong. In the meantime, District 9 is a very good film and a breath of fresh air in the otherwise usually boring and unsurprising Sci-Fi film landscape.
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4 Responses to “District 9”
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Chris Says:
October 10, 2009 at 22.59Hi Eric, regarding the plot device of the fuel, the film states that the “prawns” use what amounts to biomechanoid or genetomechanoid technology; hence, the fuel was a genetic substance, not just engine oil. Whether that’s sufficiently a real enough cause to mutate a person into an alien is another question haha.
Yeah,of course there are lots of leaps of faith. Humanoid aliens from a presumably Jupiter-sized planet with seven moons? A command module the size of a tank falling from the underbelly of the mothership and *not* being found? Etc. etc.
But we have to keep in mind that although the film has elements of hard science fiction and social/media criticism (objectification is a huge theme), fundamentally it is still an action drama, the story of a man coming to grips with his identity in extraordinary circumstances. What’s really striking about the film is how much it actually succeeds as such a tale with all its many elements.
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Chris Says:
October 10, 2009 at 23.01PS — And it has quite a disarming ending (the flower scene)! Blomkamp et al pulled no punches.
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Eric Says:
October 11, 2009 at 15.20hi there, i knew about the genetic composition of the ‘oil’. However, i still found it to be a weak point in the film, that simply inhaling the stuff is enough to turn one into an alien. Ok, maybe i am being a bit harsh with this but i really enjoyed the film and thought they could have handled this one point better. Thanks for the comment!
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Kirsty Says:
October 28, 2009 at 14.15I loved this film - as a South African, it was actually very funny; there were lots of little jokes that had me giggling in the cinema. For example, the name of Copley’s character, Van der Merwe, is a South African joke in itself - Van der Merwe is the joke dumb Afrikaner, in a “so there was an englishman, and Irishman, and Van der Merwe…” kind of way.
I thought the ending was a tad sentimental. But overall I really liked the film - and I have never gone to see a film billed as “Sci-Fi” before.