DISTRICT 9

District 9 came at a time of a creative richness seldom seen in mainstream cinema. The summer of 2009 at the movies was an unusually good one with unusually good movies, many of which were good in an unusual way. It was a summer to remember not only for its surprises, but because even the expected bonanzas like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Pixar’s Up were uniquely good among their kind.

            No one would ever accuse Quentin Tarantino of complacency. Even so, no one could have guessed the ingenuity of Inglourious Basterds. Superficially, District 9, an unceremonious arrival from South Africa, made on a modest budget and cast of unknowns, seems less of a shocker. And yet, there has never been anything like it and the more you know of recent history the more it will shake you. Previews (containing an establishing narrative cut from the final release) promised little more than a ho-hum alien invasion spectacle this time with the twist of being set in Johannesburg. Grotesque as they were, the aliens spoke of harmless intentions. “We wish you no harm”, one garbled as humans entered the ship. They simply want to get back home. But for those who remember the series V, their memories helped by previews of the remake then playing in movie theaters, this could understandably be taken as a canard.

            But District 9 transcends all predictions not just because it is unlike any alien visitor movie done before but because it isn’t even really about the aliens. Besides an off-the-cuff mention of the seven moons on their home planet, District 9 is not very interested in the aliens’ culture, apart from how it relates to South Africans. There is virtually no awesome display of extra-terrestrial power or extravagant spending on alien creation, it’s human actors in those shell-like costumes.

            Instead, District 9 is concerned with the humanity or, rather, the lack of it. As it turns out, it is no coincidence that the mother ship arrived in Johannesburg where it has hovered over the city since 1982. Johannesburg was then a city boiling in the hostility stirred by apartheid. There is little evidence that director Neill Blomkamp specifically intended a religious parable, but maybe the ship was directed over Johannesburg (and not Manhattan or Washington as an observer in the opening points out) as a form of divine intervention, a step toward the healing of a country torn apart by inequality.

            Indeed, the action picks up in the post-apartheid era and there is little evidence of tension between the Whites and the Blacks, if only because they are united in their mission to rid the city of an external scourge. Neither group wants the aliens around, but resigning to the realization that they are there to stay, MNU (a private military company) is assigned by the South African government to relocate the invaders from the slums to an even more depressing camp far away from the city in a move all too reminiscent of the evacuation of Cape Town’s infamous District Six where thousands of Blacks were evicted from their homes in 1968. But now, MNU has many Black employees who are all too happy to be spearheading the relocation campaign. Nothing unites divided nationals more than a common enemy.

            Leading the evictions is Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), an ambitious but hopelessly naïve White South African eager to impress his heartless father-in-law (Louis Minaar), the head of MNU. In a move that draws suspicion, Wikus is appointed in charge of the evictions and begins leading the storm troopers to the aliens’ crumbling habitat.

                 Dismay has been expressed by some over the legitimacy of using the treatment of an alien race as an allegory for the plight of Black South Africans. For one thing, they are not the original people of the land or native to any place in this world for that matter. The manners and destructive tendencies of this particular race would disgust even the most tolerant of humans. They have developed an addiction to cat food that has brought them face to face with a Nigerian crime ring that offers the creatures cans of cat food in exchange for their supersized weapons. Rogue aliens have even assaulted the locals and gone as far as perpetuating train crashes for their own amusement.

            It’s hard to imagine any society tolerating these creatures, and yet the allusions to discrimination in South Africa are so thick they could only have been Blomkamp’s driving motivation. Although the term attached to the aliens, “prawns”, describes these krill-like race pretty well, it has become a slur against them just as “Boer”, originally applied to Dutch farmers on the Cape came to be a loaded word almost on the level of “kaffir”.

            Yes, but it’s hard to make a case that the ostracizing of these tentacled beings is comparable to human discrimination and suffering. Viewed through these lenses, the words of a young South African interviewed in the opening shots hit home, “It would be different if they were from another country. But they are not even from this planet.”

            However, there may be more than one way to look at the movie. Perhaps, the extreme otherness of the aliens is what helps Blacks and Whites find common ground much like the conquering aliens of Independence Day did for the entire world. Wikus, after all, works well with his Black colleagues with no signs of resentment. If District 9 is taken this way, there is no hypocrisy on the Blacks’ part for hating the extraterrestrial invaders. For better or worse, District 9 is relatively quiet on the continued bleakness for the majority of Black South Africans. The few Blacks given lines appear to be doing well and happy working under Whites. The rest belong to the Nigerian gang that terrorizes the slums.

            This was not likely the reading that Neill Blomkamp, a White South African who lived through apartheid, had in mind, however. His film is a commentary on the struggle he saw, a point the movie makes clear. But he turns it into a meditation on the prejudice that engulfs all of humanity. His suggestion is that Black South Africans would themselves resort to hatred if another race came to be seen as inferior.

            Just as clear is where Blomkamp’s sympathies rest. The aliens are ultimately the most humane characters in District 9. They arrive on Earth not to conquer but by accident, wanting no more than to be able to return home. The alien we meet personally is even given a human name, Christopher Johnson, and a son. His boy is a clever little tyke, helping his father develop a serum that could repair their ship and send them back home.

            By contrast, the humans, not excluding Wikus, are all monsters of one sort or another. The Nigerians exploit the creatures and butcher them for their body parts which they believe to hold a healing potion. The locals want them gone and MNU is happy to oblige.

            A case could be made that Wikus is being used by his father-in-law and is himself a mere pawn. But he does take a perverse delight in shoving the aliens off and killing off their unhatched offsprings by setting the eggs ablaze. His primary motivation may be scoring points with his father-in-law, but he enjoys the brutality that often accompanies the evictions a little too obviously. Then again, there isn’t much that can be said for any of the other humans, not even his wife (Vanessa Haywood). Note how quickly she loses faith in her husband after her father turns her against him.

            Wikus achieves the distinction of being virtually the only human in the movie with redeeming qualities only by becoming an alien himself. While raiding Christopher Johnson’s shack he discovers the valuable serum and accidentally squirts some on his face. He becomes and infected and gradually morphs into one of the creatures he helped oppress. This is his turning point. By being persecuted like one, Wikus becomes compassionate toward the alien race and discovers the full extent of MNU’s wickedness. They had been experimenting on aliens for some time and now that he is the first human to balance human and alien DNA, Wikus is worth more to the company dead than alive. Indeed, his father orders him butchered and the parts sold to science institutes. When he escapes the lab, the very humans he worked for turn against him and lead a hunt for him in the slums of Johannesburg.

            Wikus finds shelter in the home of Christopher Johnson and the kindly alien takes compassion on his former oppressor. He promises to reverse the course of the infection before he flies back home, but he is going to need to get the serum back from MNU. The final showdown between the aliens and the humans begins.

            This is all handled with great insight and the movie’s excitement comes at full force with the weight of hefty political commentary. Such is the nature of Blomkamp’s fine debut. Like Wikus, the film itself is a hybrid. It was made on a small-scale, but produced by current box-office ruler Peter Jackson (though his name ultimately had little to do with the film’s success). It looks good, but forgoes extravagant effects for an elaborate viral marketing campaign in which “Humans Only” and “No Humans Allowed” billboards were scattered in cities around the world. It begins in the increasingly trendy hand-held camera style, mocking up a documentary feel, and then gradually evolves into the look of a traditional sci-fi blockbuster, though the content is far from routine.

            Against the odds, Blomkamp stuck gold. If nothing else, he made one of the most original and exciting sci-fi films in years. But he didn’t stop at that and transcended the genre’s limitations and made a film with something to say. District 9 hits us with the angst and passion of a filmmaker wanting to get something off their chest. Blomkamp’s hodge-podge of styles, formulas, and even emotions was a costly gamble, but it pays off. District 9 works beautifully up until the end, when Wikus jumps into gigantic alien armor and blasts away at his enemies. Blomkamp has stated that the movie had no direct influences and there isn’t a reason to disbelieve him. There has never been anything like District 9.  He did, however, credit a host of 1980s action flicks like The Terminator and RoboCop as subconscious influences, but the final battle is all too similar to the Transformers franchise (though there are shades of Iron Man with close-ups of Copley’s bewildered face while fighting inside the big metal cocoon), albeit with a little more brain and heart. It’s fun, but not very thoughtful.

            Given the mastery of trope alchemy that was on display before this, however, Blomkamp can easily be forgiven for cutting loose in the last act. District 9 is destined to become an eccentric classic of its sort. But what exactly is its sort is not an easy question to answer.