District 9 (2009)

Neill Blomkamp’s engrossing (and sometimes plain gross) District 9 works the very un-funny flipside of all those noble “first contact” stories: what if, instead of treating the first aliens we encountered with reverence or tact, we humans treated them in the same rotten, self-centered way we’ve been treating each other for centuries?

The situation, cleverly filled in for us by talking-head “interviews” and “news footage” in the early minutes of the film, is this: a massive spaceship glides to a stop over Johannesburg, South Africa (why not?). Alien creatures are found inside, scared, lost, and malnourished. Apparently they cannot operate their own ship. Initial humanitarian (alienitarian?) outcry from around the world demands that the creatures (nicknamed “Prawns” due to their spindly, crustacean-like appearance) be helped, and so they are loaded down into a holding camp near Johannesburg. But, as so often happens, good will starts to run out. Once it appears that the Prawns are here to stay, no one wants the tall, ugly, clicking, trash-eating creatures in their backyards. Anti-Prawn riots break out, anti-Prawn signage goes up (my favorite: “No non-human loitering!”), and the refugee camp swells grossly into “District 9,” the slum that gives the film its title. Because the Prawns come with the requisite nifty not-of-this-world technology, of course weapons manufacturers are very interested. When it turns out that only Prawns can work Prawn weapons, though (something about DNA compatibility), even big business loses interest, and, with public opinion on the slide, the Prawns have to go.

Governments in South Africa and elsewhere have long since washed their hands of the refugee creatures, so the job of “relocating” the Prawns falls to a contractor: a security corporation with the ominously banal name of Multi-National United (MNU for short). Working with hired soldiers, MNU workers are supposed to canvass District 9 and get (force) Prawn recognition of trumped up “eviction notices” so that the Prawns can be shipped to an even rattier tent city (“District 10,” of course) farther away from the Johannesburg suburbs. There is nothing respectable about this operation. Oversight of it rests upon a weasely MNU middle manager named Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copely), whose most remarkable achievement thus far has been marrying the daughter of the corporation president. Wikus is, of course, flattered, and heads for District 9 looking to pad his resume and full of chipper condescension. Prawns leave; Wikus gets his picture on TV—everyone (but the Prawns, of course) wins. But while on assignment, Wikus has a close encounter with some alien biotechnology that forces him to start taking a much more personal interest in the fate of the Prawns, especially when he learns what MNU really has in mind for them.

District 9 is the second science-fiction film this summer (along with Moon) to remember that sci-fi can be based on speculation as well as spectacle. This is that rare summer film that grabs you first with its premise, and only then with its visual effects (somewhat uneven here, though the all-CGI Prawns look great). Because the action takes place in writer-director Blomkamp’s native South Africa, much has been made of the film as an allegory for that country’s former Apartheid policies. That’s there, of course, but the xenophobia and corporate cruelty on display in the film represent a pretty general face of the evil that humans do. That South Africa was once the poster nation for this sort of unpleasantness is to the film’s benefit, but I don’t think it’s the whole point. Nigerian gangsters are also on hand to victimize the Prawns, and the mock newsreels show people of many accents wishing the Prawns would just go home. This is a film about human nature, and Blomkamp’s use of a quasi-documentary feel for the first half of the film helps lend realism to its sci-fi premise. We could be watching reality TV here, or a CNN special report.

And then there’s the lead character. I learn from a little internet reading that “Van Der Merwe” is a common South African name for characters in jokes, like Sven and Olle are for Garrison Keillor’s Minnesotans. And indeed, Wikus has much more in common with Steve Carell’s character from “The Office” than with the type of guy usually played by, say, Hugh Jackman. He cracks painfully lame jokes with underlings, calls everyone his mate, and chews out the hired soldiers for having more bullets than “the rules allow.” Wikus is, in short, a jerk. At first we follow him because he is the apparent focus of a documentary on the “relocation” effort. Sometimes we wish he wasn’t, especially when he merrily “aborts” a shack-full of incubating Prawn eggs (this involves a flamethrower). And yet, the screenplay doesn’t make him an utter monster. He likes his job. He really loves his wife, and she (rare for a boss’s daughter in movies) really loves him back. Wikus is not evil; he’s just selfish—but the movie shows how easily the one can slide into the other, and how close the most “normal” of us is to either at any given time. Copely’s acting is not the stuff stardom is made of, but he accomplishes the feat of letting us root for Wikus without necessarily liking him.

District 9 is also savvy in the way it portrays the Prawns. At first, we only see them as others do—they’re subjects of news reports and punditry, as well as some wretchedly inept running commentary from Wikus. Slowly, however, the story reveals them on their own terms, and we realize that some characteristics (like trash-eating) are the result of circumstances and are not innate to the Prawns themselves. Like all disparaged ethnic groups, they’re not nearly as backward as outsiders think they are, and like all refugees, they’d like themselves to “just go home,” too. It’s to the film’s credit that it allows this change in perspective to sink in slowly, and that it never goes so far as to rob the Prawns of their potential danger. After all, we gun-and-knife-toting humans are no cupcakes, either.

This is not to say that District 9 is a masterpiece of subtlety. This is a film with a summer release date, after all, and by the end we’re firmly in action-movie territory. The themes remain, but they’re buried under gun-centric camera angles and splattery casualties that owe more to shoot-‘em-up online video games than to Orson Scott Card novels. Still, it’s admirable when a movie merely puts its brain to one side by its end, instead of abandoning thought altogether. And the ending, if not completely "happy," is satisfactory, with pretty much all the major players receiving what they deserve, including, I would argue, Wikus. After all, the guy has a lot to learn.

This is Neill Blomkamp’s first major directing effort, and it is a good one. It may well merit a sequel (and there are enough openings in the story to allow one). I more appreciate that its premise and story merit reflection. I don’t know that District 9 is the best movie of the year, or even of the summer. I do know that I saw it two days ago, and I’m still thinking about it. To me, that alone is worth the ticket price.