District 9 September 8, 2009
Posted by Conrad Hubbard in : The Chip , add a comment
If you have already seen this movie, then you already know, or you disagree. For me, this movie was a real surprise. I saw a trailer for it, and expected it to either be some sort of crappy action flick or a poorly done alien conspiracy piece. Instead, I was treated to a gritty story with lots of views of humanity at its worst and best.
Hm, how do I say this without a spoiler. The moment that I saw the main character get sprayed in the face with some alien goop, I knew he was going to become capable of a certain thing that was already vaguely hinted in the movie. I did not foresee the layers that would unfold in the process. From the suggestions of voodoo by a villainous warlord, to the tender pleas to his wife, there were lots of little moments that made the film work despite a backdrop which seemingly promised absurdity.
The aliens were pretty freaky looking, and didn’t initially come off as believable to me. But somehow this ultimately worked for me. Once I accepted them as freakish and probably somewhat ridiculous they became part of the backdrop. Dropping them into abject poverty in an African shack town, and filming it all with a gritty, documentary style somehow turned them into characters rather than bad special effects.
But the aliens aren’t really the story. The story is a human tale of being outcast, of desperation, of unexpected honor and of the glimmer of humanity found amidst the depraved and inhumane. The actions of mankind are sometimes more alien that those of the aliens, and the aliens sometimes more human than our own kind. This could just as easily be a story of any number of genocidal events in human history. However, it disguises all of that with a chitinous hide and some suitably jerky camerawork. You come into the show expecting bugs and troopers, and instead you see the sins and crimes of the last century played by a puppet show of CGI aliens and faux documentary.