SPACE INVADERS EVOKE SYMPATHY IN DISTRICT 9
A spacecraft hovers over Johannisberg. A million or so ugly extraterrestrial aliens, who speak a strange language, descend to earth. They are herded into the city’s District 9, where they build shanties and seek food from trashdumps for two decades, called “prawns” because their appearance and appetite resemble bottom-feeding crustaceans. The good citizens of the city dislike their filth, so they decide to move the aliens to another walled compound, District 10, by force if necessary. District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp, is more social science fiction than science fiction, as Blacks and Whites in the city agree that they must be treated as animals with obvious parallels to the apartheid era, notably District 6, the mixed race (“coloreds”) part of Capetown that was declared Whites-only in 1966, whereupon 60,000 residents were expelled. Wikus Van De Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley), son-in-law of the owner of the government contract in charge of the forcible eviction, however, gets so close to the most recalcitrant aliens, who want to stay, that he is infected with their DNA, and an alien limb replaces his left arm. Then he finds out why aliens do not want to move, tries to get what they need most, but is pursued as an unacceptable half-breed. At the beginning of the film, the aliens appear disgusting, but not at the end, as Wikus’s plight unlocks the secrets of the extraterrestrial sojourn that can be used to liberate some of them. The Political Film Society has nominated District 9 as best film on human (alien) rights of 2009. MH