Last night, after having consulted the helpful Yahoo! Movie reviews, my husband and I went to see District 9. I am not usually a "sci-fi" person, but I have enjoyed films of this genre in the past (Alien/s, Star Wars, The Matrix (kind of), Spaceballs, and My Cousin Vinny to name a few). The Yahoo! critics gave the movie an "A-" and Yahoo! users a "B+". Past movies to earn an "A" grade from the critics were Doubt, Frost/Nixon, The Departed, and The Queen--GOOD movies that found themselves a place on my Academy Award nominations ballot in March. So, I was excited to see the movie.
Having no information about the movie, other than what the minimal teaser provided, I was not sure what to expect from the plot. I quickly deduced that there was an allegorical connection to South African apartheid. After all, the movie is set in Johannesburg, South Africa and begins with a journalistic reporting of the relationship between humans (multi-racial) and aliens (crustacean-like beings depicted as semi-violent, scavenging victims of segregation and disenfranchisement). The aliens are called by the "duragatory" nickname "prawns," because, as one character says, "that's what they look like." I think this political backdrop and the execution of the documentary-style content was actually quite clever.
Where the movie fails, however, is in the perplexing and awkward inconsistencies of narrative style and character development. The majority of the film proceeds as if it is a retrospective on the tragic circumstances of a government offical (Werkis) charged with clearing out a shantytown called District 9. While on duty, the Werkis becomes contaminated with an alien substance that causes his transformation into a hybrid cross between the human and alien species (akin slightly to another great sci-fi classic: David Cronenberg's The Fly). At about this time in the movie, the narrative shifts out of the "faux documentary" style into a more traditional narrative frame that centers its focus on the hopes and anxieties of one alien "family" (led by an alien named Christopher Johnson). There is then a constant shifting between the satirical documentary and the sober narrative of the alien escape that it hindered my suspension of disbelief to an annoying degree. I do not understand how the producers allowed for this inconsistency of narrative technique.
Moreover, there is no real depth to the emotional upheaval of either Werkis or the subversive aliens. The marital commotion and betrayal, as well as the bi-galaxial friendship that forms between the two main characters is so awkwardly superficial, it defeats the potentially profound effects of the allegory to apartheid brutality and the real compassion that did exist therein.
So, I will bear with the glowing encomiums of what the movie was trying to do, while remaining confused about the stylistic decisions. In truth, I think the film is overly ambitious in all of its goals. While admirable in its endeavor, the combination of science fiction, action thriller, political satire, historical allusion, and dramatic storytelling remains in its execution clumsy at best.
