Entertainment for Thinkers

It has recently been noted that this summer at the multi-plex was a rather event-less one. With a drop in ticket sales everywhere, and outside of the usual book and toy features (Harry Potter, G.I. Joe, Transformers) there really wasn't that much to have gotten excited about; animation was exciting, but didn't find much of a market outside of families, horror was largely M.I.A., most of the comedies were stiff, the blockbusters were noisy, the dramas were limp. And just when it seemed the season would have ended as unspectacularly as it began (although these fingers are still crossed for Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds), along comes District 9.
Written and directed by newbie South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp, the movie bears the name-tag of Peter Jackson, he of The Lord of the Rings fame, as producer. Jackson's talent as a director won't be re-hashed here, but suffice it to say, it must be a special occasion for him to have attached his name to such a project, even previewing the movie himself at July's Comic-Con in San Diego.
The film is a straight-forward one- from the first jittery frame it seeks to grab and hold your attention. And indeed it does. Meet Wikus Van der Merwe, recently appointed head agent in charge of MNU's (Multi-National United) plan to ship the alien residents of District 9 to District 10. Yes. You read correctly. Alien residents. How did the country (the film is set in Johannesburg, South Africa) become a residence to aliens, you wonder? 20-odd years ago a space ship hovered over New York and Chicago, before coming to a stand-still over the city of Johannesburg. An expedition from Earth arrives and cuts its way into the ship. Inside, the humans find millions of alien worker drones, sick and malnourished, and a massive operation is begun to transport the aliens from their ship to the ground, feed them, and give them a new home. But what starts out well-intentioned (District 9) quickly becomes a concentration camp and a slum. When the slum, and its residents become nuisances for the human residents of South Africa, the MNU decide to evict them.
Van der Merwe is not competent to handle the operation of which he is placed in charge of- the film's first frame proves this, and on his first day, he is contaminated by alien fluid, breaks his arm and has to be rushed to the hospital. Sharlto Copely in the role of Van der Merwe is superb. As the main human interface for viewers of the film, he easily wins our sympathy as the odds against him stack up. A naive character is he, one strongly believing in the system, quickly becoming a victim of the very cause he sought to champion.
The settlement for the aliens became a teeming shantytown like so many ghettos in the developing world, with the relatively minor distinction of being home to tall, skinny bipeds with insect-like faces and bodies that seem to combine biological and mechanical features. Though there is evidence that those extraterrestrials- known in derogatory slang as "prawns" because of their vaguely crustacean appearance- represent an advanced civilization, their lives on Earth are marked by squalor and dysfunction. And they are viewed by South Africans of all races with suspicion, occasional pity and xenophobic hostility. This is where District 9 the film shines; not in its presentation of the aliens, and certainly not in its presentation of the aliens in relation to the city's human residents, indeed nowhere in film history has aliens ever been fully accepted into society without some modicum of hostility and suspicion. Where the film shines is in its allegorical politics- it is no coincidence that this xenophobic hostility takes place in South Africa, in the exact place where apartheid coloured one ethnicity's treatment of the other. That country’s history of apartheid and its continuing social problems are never mentioned in the film, but they hardly need to be. Indeed, the film’s implications extend far beyond the boundaries of a particular nation (as there are even shades of the Nazi concentration camps), which is taken as more or less representative of the planet as a whole.
Van der Merwe is a pathetic little paper-pusher, and it says a lot about director Blomkamp's sense of humour to hang human's moral redemption on his shoulders. This occasional offbeat humor is needed - the material is so bleak that without it, it would be a tough 112 minutes to endure, after all, it is a summer blockbuster. Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell are not above having a laugh at, say, the aliens' jones for cat food, cans and all, and the popularity of inter-species prostitution. Watching the film, one can't help but be reminded of another nifty alien movie, Cloverfield. Both films use unique camera-work to patch their stories together, leaving the audience to figure things out for themselves, inadvertently subverting an entire genre of film. But where Cloverfield seemed a by-product of our up-to-the-minute Blackberry/Youtube generation, and a somewhat spoof of our need to put a camera in front of something and press the record button, District 9 uses a documentary style to flesh its story out. In a flurry of mock-news images and talking-head documentary chin-scratching, the story is filled in by people Van der Merwe worked and associated with. We get to understand how he became to be in charge of the operation, then we are thrust head-first into how the story develops or, rather, unravels.
It has to be admitted that the film shifts from speculative science fiction to zombie bio-horror and then, less subtly, turns into an escape-action-chase movie full of explosions, gun-play and vehicular mayhem. But it also has to be admitted that the world in which Blomkamp has created never becomes unbelievable for even a second, so much so that one can easily take for granted the carefully rendered details of the setting, the tightness of the editing and the inventiveness of the special effects. And what amazing special effects they are- the aliens are cinematic works of art! Made expressive and soulful, they talk with a mixture of whirring, clicking speech and English. Even if one wasn't paying attention to the sub-titles (yes, there are sub-titles) they are still easily understood. The action sequences are expertly choreographed, easy to follow, and generate a sense of tension and excitement, with the biggest and, quite possibly, best involving a giant robot-like creature. (Take that, Transformers.)
Expanding upon the ideas explored in Blomkamp's 2005 short, "Alive in Joburg", the film recalls the likes of other such dystopian films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Spielberg's War of the Worlds and Independence Day. Absent are the high-minded ideals evident in more optimistic productions such as E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Trek: First Contact. Here, the premise is simple: the humanitarian impulses that lead to the planet welcoming the aliens are quickly overridden by greed and xenophobia. Some try to profit from the newcomers while others, ruled by fear, want to destroy them. Some might argue that Blomkamp's perspective is bleak and cynical, but a cursory glimpse at the whole of recorded history certainly validates his position. Just pick any history book up.
At its core the film tells the story- hardly an unfamiliar one in the literature of modern South Africa- of how a member of the socially dominant group becomes aware of the injustice that keeps him in his place and the others, his designated inferiors, in theirs. The cost he pays for this knowledge is severe, as it must be, given the dreadful contours of the system. But if the film’s view of the world is bleak, it is not quite nihilistic. It suggests that sometimes the only way to become fully human is to be completely alienated. When Van der Merwe runs back to District 9 for refuge, the film speaks volumes on how everyone of us, black or white, all need the very same things- acceptance, safety, shelter and sympathy.
The filmmakers don’t draw out these themes with a heavy, didactic hand. Instead, in the best B-movie tradition, they embed their ideas in an ingenious and suspenseful genre entertainment, one that respects your intelligence even as it makes your eyes pop and your stomach turn. And oh how your stomach will turn. Like another witty genre film released this season, Drag Me to Hell, the film's reliance on things that will make you squirm is almost endless. But that's fine- B-movies can get away with that sort of gimmick if it fits perfectly well into the plot of things.
The film accomplishes a rare thing: it's a science fiction story with depth and thought-provoking ideas that still has room for shoot-outs, explosions, and bloody violence. The R-rating is well earned- persons, after being hit by an energy weapon, explode in showers of blood, and Wikus' transformation is just as gruesome as when something similar happened to Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.
By inverting an axiomatic question of the U.F.O. genre- what are they going to do to us?- the movie poses a different kind of hypothetical puzzle. What would we do to them? The answer, derived from intimate knowledge of how we have treated one another for centuries, is not pretty. By realigning our sympathies, challenging what we come to expect from film and indeed entertainment, and by presenting heavy moral themes all packaged up in the neat frills of a summer blockbuster, one can't help but remember another film that did these very same things exactly one year ago- Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. This film may not be as incendiary a work as that, but as the summer of 2009 comes to a close, District 9 will go down as one the season's very best.