The District 9 Ghetto

After a long, long time, I finally succumbed to watch this movie. I had my hubby watch it with me and we saw it at home, so that we could pause it whenever I had a question...which I have to say was often. Nat had seen it already and had been bugging me to see it before the Academy Awards, but there was too much to see, so it had to wait.
I really didn't know what to expect with this movie. It's a Peter Jackson film, so I expected a higher quality film already. Hmmm, interesting premise for the film. The basic storyline is that an alien ship stops over Johanesburg and when it's infiltrated aliens are found to be malnurished and in serious need of help. An area is set up for them called District 9 (somewhat like the ghettos that my grandparents were forced to live in during WW2) to contain and manage these creatures. The film follows one man who works for the company dealing with alien/human relations and what happens to him as he tries to get the aliens to move from one area to another, estentially because the govenment is evicting the creatures from their homes.
I found that the documentary type of film making with all these interviews etc was a tiring after a while and I longed for a "normal" story line. It was so sad. So sad all the time. It took me a while to get my head around the fact that we as a people/human beings apparently learned nothing from the Nazis, nothing from Apartheid and nothing from any other horrible situation in our history where humans vilified other humans for being different. These creatures were reasonably intelligent, and had language skills and could parent and keep a home for themselves. There was no reason for us to assume that they weren't capable of handling themselves. The keep them powerless and hungry and under constant surveillence, makes anyone frustrated, defensive and aggressive. These aliens (and yes, I just said that) were being attacked, tortured and demeaned for being themselves. It was hard for me to find any type of compassion for our tortured soul who ends up in the middle of a large scandalous situation where in the end he must join forces with the very beings that he found so unpleasant. He was incapable of seeing them as other living creatures that needed assistance and generosity. He used derogatory language and aggression to get what he wanted. It was very difficult for me to feel anything for him...I spent much of this movie with my mouth hanging open trying to follow.
The script was decent and I thought that the story was interesting and reasonably clever...but I don't mean in a cutzy way. This movie really bothered me. It wasn't horrible or bad, but it was incredibly difficult and forced me to watch things on screen that made me uncomfortable.
I'm glad that I finally saw the film, but I was left with a feeling of overwhelming ambivalence...I didn't know what to feel or what to think. These weren't cute little forest creatures who needed some help to keep their homes, these were ugly and scary creatures who had unfortunately relied upon another planet to help during a time of dire need and necessity. It was pretty obvious that the aliens made the wrong choice by coming to Earth. It was a sad commentary on what Jackson thinks of us.