Sharlto Copley in District 9.
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Evicted and imprisoned, deprived of their rights, the aliens could be the Palestinians in Gaza, the detainees in Guantánamo or, transparently, black South Africans for the 46 years of apartheid and, in effect, for centuries before. (The title is a play on District Six, a vibrant mixed-race area of Cape Town that was declared whites-only in 1966, after which 60,000 of its residents were forcibly removed.) In his 2005 rough draft for District 9, the short film Alive in Joburg, Blomkamp didn't foreground the political elements. But while writing the feature script with Terri Tatchell, he became aware "that all these very serious topics about racism and xenophobia and segregation would start to shine through the science-fiction-esque veneer," he says. "I had to be very careful that I didn't get too close to these serious topics with a film that's mostly a summer thrill ride." He told himself, "It's your first film. Use it as satire. Chill out."
The seriousness is apparent yet not obtrusive. Whites seem to run the country, the corporations and the media, much as they did under apartheid, but that will hardly register with international audiences conditioned to see a parade of Caucasians in action movies. What is more likely to grab viewers is the dynamic storytelling (partly in mockumentary form), the gruesome yet sympathetic aliens, the robot suit that briefly turns Wikus into Iron Man, and the surfeit of body parts exploding. Like David Cronenberg--especially in his masterpiece, The Fly--Blomkamp is fascinated by the ways our bodies morph, decay and betray us. And like Jackson's early, grotty films (Bad Taste, Braindead--the titles say it all), District 9 revels in its mixture of horror and loopy humor and in the propensity for odd-looking creatures to suddenly go splat!
Even more impressive is the way this feature-film novice director sells his vision of Johannesburg as a dusty sump hole, a place of sapping heat and blinding glare. The creatures aren't caressed with the moody lighting of most monster films; by sticking them out in the sun, Blomkamp demystifies them and shows off their CGI sophistication. (Virtually all the aliens were created digitally; he used very few puppets.) "I wanted the image to feel incredibly raw and unmanipulated," he says, "almost like it came straight from the camera sensors right onto the screen. So instead of setting the shot up and really making a big deal of the effects and then going back to normal footage, I wanted it to feel as if the effects were completely part of the scene."
Blomkamp, who directed three shorts in the Halo video-game universe, was hired by Jackson to make a Halo feature. That project foundered after a few months, and Jackson proposed that Blomkamp make a different feature right away. He resuscitated the Alive in Joburg idea, expanding and improving it into District 9. Jackson even let Blomkamp cast Copley, a high school pal who had never acted, in the lead. Amazingly, Copley carries the film, bringing to a most demanding role the scheming dimness of Harry Dean Stanton mixed with the dogged, unwarranted optimism of Steve Carell. Jackson, says Blomkamp, is "the guy that allowed everything to happen." Through the shoot and editing, "he'd always say, 'Make the film you want to make.'" Wise teacher; star pupil.