An originalBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
To delight this critic with sci-fi, you need a heavy dose of allegory, jaw breaking production values, developing characters, ingenious plot, and eye-easing cinematography. The Peter Jackson produced District 9 pretty much has all these except for the last. If it weren't for the disorienting, jittery, hand-held cameras, the film would be an almost perfect modern sci fi.
And I hold a respect for the genre from Metropolis through Forbidden Planet down to 28 Days Later. So this film is within the district.
Aliens have landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. For twenty years they have been held in compound District 9, but the natives are restless to get the ugly "prawns" out of their 'hood. Such a plan to move over a million aliens to a holding camp is given to unlikely leader Wikus (Sharlto Copley), whose challenges as the lead organizer are almost insurmountable. Just think of occupying Iraq or apartheid, and you'll get the idea.
Wikus becomes almost the entire focus of the film, and in that sense he embodies all of those residents who fear outsiders, but who discover deep wells of understanding inside themselves as to who the real enemies are. In Wikus's case, alien Chris Johnson becomes a "Christ" in the allegorical tradition, but just barely. Actually the parallel themes to our time are ample besides that biblical chestnut.
That Wikus develops as a character is a saving grace of the film because the alien-virus-contracting hero struggles with the ambitious Jo'Burgers such as his father-in-law who want to harvest his organs to gain the power the aliens have but no one else can use because of their special DNA. Imaginative District 9 is; bloodless and visually stable it is not.
While District 9 has obvious reference to this summer's blockbusting Transformers in its alien attack machine, it is smarter and scarier. See it, but don't eat through it?it's gory.
Although directed by Neill Blomkamp from his short story and film, Peter Jackson's sweeping vision of cinema as a visceral extension of the audience's dreams dominates. And that's good.
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com