Even though the Oscars are a distant memory I’m sure there are those of you (myself included) who didn’t finish watching all the contenders for best picture. So I’m going to consider the following posts relevant.
I’m not going to lie, when I saw that District 9 was on the Best Picture list, and thus we were going to have to watch it (well, no one was making us but me) I was less than thrilled. I’m not really into sci-fi, aliens, etc. It’s just not my thing. District 9 was a movie I had heard of and filed away in my brain as “no need to ever see”, you know one of those movies you click on Netflix “not interested”. I summed up my courage and put it at the top of the queue and with a solid recommendation from my friend Meghan (with a strong warning to not eat any food while watching this movie) we settled in.
Extraterrestrial creatures are stranded on Earth and the military assigns them a slum to live in, so that they can keep them all together and monitor them. At the beginning of the movie we learn that a group called MNU (Multinatinoal United) are assigned to work with the military to relocate all of the “prawns” (the deragatory term for Alien) from District 9 (the slum they are currently in) to an internment camp outside of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. Wikus van de Merwe is in charge of this relocation. However, during the process of evicting the aliens, Wikus comes upon a substances that he accidentally ingests. He soon starts to feel ill, and it is later revealed that his left arm has mutated to that of an alien. In the meantime, Christopher Johnson, an alien, his son and his friend are trying to locate alien technology from the ship so that they can return to their planet and escape from life on Earth.
The film is shot mockumentary style, which was very fitting. It felt at times that you were watching live news footage of something really happening in the world. To me, this made me think more about how I would react if this was really going on. It brought it closer to reality than some sci-fi movie I was watching. It is a perfect story that shows if we put aside our pre-conceived notions of something or someone and really got to know them and the situation that they are in we would certainly handle situations differently. As the story started I felt one way (scared and not sure I wanted to watch) and as it progressed I definitely felt another way (sympathetic, empathetic, sad, upset and frustrated).
District 9 is a powerful movie with a powerful message disguised as an alien sci-fi movie. It is definitely worth seeing and I think that even if there had only been 5 movies in the Best Picture category instead of 10 that District 9 would have been deserving of the Best Picture nod.
4.5 Stars
P.S. – But don’t eat during the movie, there are some really gross parts. If you’re no squemish then chow down my friends!
Post in Comments:
Did you see District 9? What did you think?
i definitely should not have had spaghetti while watching this movie. i did like the movie a lot though, despite the ick factor the message was pretty good and i liked they way the message unfolded. a timely movie
By: meghan on May 10, 2010
at 10:44 am