District 9 (2009)

District 9 has just joined the ranks of my favorite sci-fi movies, alongside The Fifth Element, Red Planet, and Brazil. District 9 has heart, irony, and a warning about holding onto the essence of our humanity. The story begins in a you-are-there documentary style as Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a cheerful if clueless bureaucrat, blathers on camera prior to beginning his newly assigned duties as head of the UN-style force that is to evict then relocate 1.8 million prawnlike space aliens that have been found stranded on Earth and left squatting in detention camps outside of Johannesburg for 20 years. Hints begin quickly that the relocation effort will not and (since the documentary has already been made) did not go well at all. Indeed, "prawns" live in abject poverty and as such they prove to be an apt metaphor for any human population that is abandoned to fester without hope in derelict slums filled with trash heaps -- think Avatar meets Paradise Now -- with the noted exception that prawns secretly know how to build technology more advanced than humans, if and when they can cadge together the proper raw materials. In any case, Merwe's incompetence and blithe stupidity both cause and compound a calamity that will hold momentous import for possibly the existence of the whole human race. What's interesting is that, the deeper he falls into the prawn labyrinth, the more humanity and strength we see shown forth in the formerly "weak" and ineffective Merwe -- esp. since he is rising to defend human values on behalf of the prawns and against humanity's duplicitous corporate state (led by a father-in-law who has it in for him). District 9 humanizes the prawns as they represent and possibly escalate the menace they tacitly pose to all of humanity -- even as the story demonstrates how cooperation, detente, and peaceful accord ultimately come down to two persons on two sides who initiate a dialog, make a quid pro quo compromise, and thereby build a path to peace (or, failing that, escalation). We should see, because a sequel seems certain. 5 stars.