District 9’ feels as real as CNN

Science fiction has always been a marginal genre. In terms of art, at least.

For every “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner” there’s a “Robot Monster” or a “Beast of Yucca Flats.”

Not that I’m quibbling. I’ve spent many an afternoon watching dreck that features gorilla-bodied monsters running around the back hills of L.A. (see “Robot Monster”). And I’ve enjoyed myself.

The spirit of those afternoons played out last night as I sat through Neill Blomkamp’s scintillating sci-fi offering “District 9.” There was a difference, though. Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, “District 9” is a blend of sci-fi fantasy and political commentary – if not actual insight.

The film follows what happens when a mysterious spaceship one day shows up in the skies over Johannesburg. Why Johanesburg? Mainly because Blomkamp is from there. But it serves a purpose, too, in reflecting the social conditions that played out there throughout the 20th century.

The ship, which floats above the city like an oversized Christmas-tree bauble, attracts the curiosity of the humans below. So when the aliens fail to emerge, the Earthlings decide to force their way in. And what do they find? Instead of sci-fi wonder, they find overcrowding and squalor.

Pretty soon the aliens are brought into the city. And pretty soon after that they’re being consigned to a ghetto. This leads, as typically happens in such conditions, to problems. Those from Earth, of all classes and color, tend to complain. Those from the ship devolve into savagery.

Blomkamp tells his story through the experiences of a low-level bureaucrat named Wikus Van De Merve (Sharlto Copley). Assigned by his officious father-in-law to oversee the eviction of the aliens from their ghetto to a new location – which is little more than a concentration camp – Wikus (pronounced Vee-kus) finds himself caught between dueling brutalities: alien, soldier and native African.

For a weak-kneed functionary, that’s a hard battleground to negotiate. His job is complicated when he becomes infected by a strange alien fluid and finds his body starting to change.

That’s the point when Vikus’ world begins to fall apart. He becomes a pawn, used by humans investigating how to use alien weapons. So he runs away, taking refuge in the very ghetto that he had been trying to empty.

And as he becomes the focus of a search, he begins to grow as a man. From a sycophant be becomes a victim and, ultimately, a reluctant hero.

“District 9” is one of those contemporary studies, a film that is told partly as a mock documentary, partly through quasi-official video recordings and news reports and partly as objective narrative. Think of television’s “The Office.” Or maybe “The Blair Witch Project.” In that sense, it isn’t exactly original.

And it ends in a way that begs sequel.

Even so, Copley is great as Vikus. And the strength of the film’s style gives the sci-fi story line an immediacy that makes it seem ripped from the headlines. It feels authentic, altogether real, so much so that you can be excused from looking for the CNN logo.

Which, of course, is something no one’s ever said of “Robot Monster.”