Here it is. District 9. After every single action movie called the 'BEST MOVIE EVAR!' by some slobbery prepubescent fanboy circle. After the alright Dark Knight and above average Iron Man. After the well-crafted but hysterical "look at this explosion! look at this shiny object!" Star Trek. After the conceptually fantastic but overposed and over-Americanized Watchmen, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Then, very rarely, there is a defining movie, one made right from the dirtpit of selling out---District 9, a creative alternate history where aliens land onto Earth in 1982 with all sorts of difficulties, conflicts, rages and an eventual mini-apocalypse, fits in here. It's a complex, knowing work; the first noticeable thing District 9 does (apart from blending faux-documentary footage with fiction) is avoiding the cliche obsession with an exotic sense of geography and landmarks in many other alien movies--this one starts itself off in a poor, poverty-stricken Africa, and the movie effortlessly spends its remainder both wrenching you and avoiding all other cliches and stereotypes possible--here, for example, the aliens are the good guys, and the heartless ones are ourselves. And though it remains realistic and firmly embedded in disillusionment, it is still something with multiple interpretations--a study on a dying, corrupt government, a portrait of the direct, most visceral decay of humanity, a deconstruction and liberation of today's strained social architecture, a statement on the ignorance of culture and a prediction of its end, and, most obviously, an allegory on racism. But throughout this heavy political baggage, pathos and tragedy, and difficult confrontations and reflections of our own world, District 9 is truly a fun, whirlwind ride into a human descent--from the go-getter visions of the spaceship hovering over the African slums to the marvelous, beautifully dry and suncaked images of the camps and aliens, the hyperreal anti-colors and stylistic strayings mark both the decline of economics, morals and compassion in the world after the alternate-historical arrival and of the daring narrative experimentation.
District 9 throws you straight into an endlessly wild dirtpit of social, political, emotional and moral chaos---beneath all the layers of endless action, aliens, spaceships, et cetera, the movie is a sprawling, meticulously scattered statement on just about the entire modern world and the 21st Century today--an incorporation and reconciliation of all the grief, tragedy, conflicts, ideas and diversity, District 9 even still never goes sour or bloated or plain incomprehensible, and it remembers that emotions and poetry, no matter how blunt, stark or savage they are, are still most important. And its ending--a crash-and-burn shootout followed by a documentary-style series of interviews and nostalgic "footage" from the past--is a final grasp for rejoice, a settling of all the dust and thorns gradually picked up more and more in this blistering, world reordering strait. The last two shots--one of Vicus' wife holding a metal-made flower and of an alien creating that very flower--aren't of any pandering, artificial cliffhanger-like sentiments (unlike many other blockbusters of today); those moments are one last optimistic suggestion of hope and peace and after the damage, apocalypse and disturbance. People can maybe embrace each other after all. That's where this movie makes its mark.