[Movie Reviews] – District 9

'District 9', directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson

I finally made it out to see District 9, which will probably be called the sleeper hit of this summer down the road when the DVD marketing begins. I’m certainly glad to see it doing well – I expected it to be a good film that no one saw, but fortunately, the marketing campaign for the film was really excellent, so awareness was high.

My friend Katie asked me to write up a review of the film, because she’s really eager to discuss it. After all, District 9 is a movie about ideas. It’s an allegory for apartheid and the formation of ghettos. It’s a movie that asks some serious questions by cloaking them in science fiction trappings. And there is plenty to talk about.

With that said, I need to divide this review into two sections: a review of the film as allegory, and a review of the film as science fiction. District 9 is a film that tries to ride two horses at once, and while I believe it is ultimately successful as a film and deserving of the positive criticism it has received, I also think that it is much more about the adrenaline rush than it is about telling a well-crafted story.

The Basic Plot (without any major spoilers)

The premise of District 9 is pretty simple: an alien spaceship comes to a stop over the city of Johannesburg in South Africa in the 1980s. Humans gain entry into the ship and find the aliens inside in deplorable conditions, malnourished and wallowing in excrement. The aliens are taken down to a temporary holding area called “District 9,” and brought back to health.

More than twenty years later, the aliens are still living in District 9, and it’s become a deplorable slum full of shanties built out of refuse. The aliens do not assimilate well with the humans, and are nicknamed “prawns” – a derogatory term meant to compare them to bottom-feeders. Banned from most public places, the aliens are forced to rely on an organization called the MNU for assistance… or to buy things from the Nigerian underworld.

Since the aliens have a particular taste for cat food that borders on addiction, they are able to be manipulated into giving away most of their weapons and technology. The aliens see this as a useful trade, because their weapons can’t be used by the humans. The humans, in the meantime, grow obsessed with finding ways to graft alien biology onto human hosts so they can put the technology to use.

The film centers around a man named Wikus van de Merwe who is put in charge of relocating the aliens to District 10 – an area outside of civilization where tents have been set up, not unlike a concentration camp. Wikus is not compassionate, is extremely self-centered and foolish. Apparently, his last name is a symbol of his stupidity; in South Africa, “van de Merwe” jokes revolve around a character who always does dumb things or who has bad things happen to him. There’s more than a little cultural reference in this film that requires knowledge of South African history to fully appreciate.

Wikus crosses path with an alien who seems a little smarter than the others who is officially named “Christopher Johnson” by the MNU. Christopher and his son have been gathering a strange liquid from discarded alien devices, and just as they find enough to achieve some unspoken goal, Wikus strides in, fiddles with the device, and accidentally sprays himself in the face with it. The liquid has a profound effect on his biology, and he finds himself slowly becoming an alien over the next several days, starting with his hand. As events unfold, Wikus finds himself on the run from the MNU and growing more sympathetic to the aliens and helping Christopher get back to the mothership hanging above the city, though Wikus remains self-centered and stupid through most of the film.

From this point forward, I’m going to discuss plot details of the film that will enter into the realm of spoiler territory. So, if you haven’t seen the film, go see it, and then come back to read the rest.

District 9 as Allegory

I would argue that District 9’s primary purpose is to serve as an allegory for human relations. Even though it’s cloaked in sci-fi, District 9 is really a story about how people treat other people who are different. It takes place in Johannesburg, a place where apartheid happened in a very similar fashion to what’s depicted here in the film. There is some irony that both white and black people are united against the aliens in this story, neither seeing any parallels to their own history.

The aliens are difficult for the humans to sympathize with, because the humans are focused on the aliens’ appearance and customs, and not on the point that the aliens and humans have in common. Humans don’t feel bad about discriminating against the aliens; in fact, many seem to view them as lower life forms, despite their advanced technology. The aliens are not actually that different from the humans in terms of their basic needs and desires, but they are different enough that they can be discriminated against without fear.

The aliens also represent a group of people who were once powerful, but who have been made powerless by becoming reliant on modern society. Aliens who become violent or who refuse to follow the rules are shot and killed without question. Sometimes, they’re shot out of fear. Sometimes, they’re shot out of sheer cruelty.

Christopher Johnson seems to be a leader of the group, and he’s the alien who can pilot the control pod for the mothership, though this does not become clear until later on in the film. His given name is very important – in literature, it’s common for messianic characters to have the initials “J” and “C.” Christopher Johnson is not a dead ringer for Jesus Christ, but he does depart so he can return as the savior of his people, and the question of his judgment of the humans is left unresolved at the end. I’d be willing to guess a lot of people missed this point, but it’s very important in understanding the message of the film.

Wikus represents humanity itself, and his progression from being human to alien-human hybrid to entirely alien is meant to show that the only way we can truly become compassionate of those we oppress is to be like them. Even in his hybrid state, Wikus makes decisions that result in hurting those he’s trying to help. Even at the end of the film, Wikus longs to be human again so he can return to his wife and his comfortable life. He is a tragic figure in that he never seems to learn anything; he is forced to learn based on circumstance, not growth. As such, Wikus is a troubling character, because he represents a cynical view of humanity. To call him the film’s hero would be far too charitable; even in his semi-heroic actions towards the end, Wikus is not trying to defend an oppressed people, but resigning himself to the fact that his only chance to being made human again rests in the hands of Christopher Johnson.

And so, we get to the message of the film, which is very simple: “We despise that which is different from us, and we can only outgrow our disgust by becoming like that which we dislike.” I’d say that’s a fairly bleak, yet insightful, view of humanity. The idea that an alien might live among us, leave us, and return in judgment simply reinforces this concept; “So be good to each other, or else.”

District 9 as Science Fiction

District 9 is not nearly as strong of a science fiction film as it is an allegory. The problem is that this is not a story; it’s a conceit. Science fiction has always been plagued by conceits, and they tend to result in weak storytelling. A good example of a conceit would be a story where a character does some odd things and sees the world in an odd way, and the story ends with, “because, you see, I was the dog!”. That’s a conceit.

District 9 is similarly a conceit. The idea is, “let’s take apartheid and do it with aliens.” There’s no rhyme or reason to this, and the explanations given in the film are pretty filmsy. Aliens would be a curiosity to people on Earth; they would be welcomed to other places and given special treatment. If aliens had advanced technology only they could use, they would be compensated with food or water or whatever they needed in exchange for using it. I seriously doubt defense contractors would spend so much time and effort oppressing aliens when they could be hiring them as mercenaries.

No, the film forces the idea of the “loathsome alien” into the plot so that the story can happen. The humans don’t like the aliens, but there are few explanations why. The aliens don’t want to leave Johannesburg, despite their conditions, but again, there’s no explanation why. The aliens understand human English perfectly, and even pick up on idioms and figures of speech. The humans similarly understand the aliens. In the real world, humans often can’t even understand each other when speaking different languages. None of this is remotely logical, and again, there’s no explanation why.

The aliens have advanced technology, and they’re quite capable of annihilating the humans. Instead, they foolishly sell their weapons off for cat food (which is the equivalent of drugs to them). The aliens are quite strong, and capable of killing humans with a single blow. And yet they let themselves get pushed around by a handful of Nigerians armed with guns. The aliens aren’t afraid of humans – look how many get killed in the first half hour of the film doing stupid, aggressive things! The film never really develops the reasons why the aliens are so compliant, nor does it make any logical sense for them to behave the way they do.

There are many other nagging details as well. Why does alien ship fuel turn humans into aliens? Why haven’t other humans, who have surely studied the stuff, noticed the change? Why do the aliens behave so much like humans, erecting shanties and filling their homes with trash? Why don’t the aliens seem to have a culture of their own, or a religion, or a reverence for their own technology? Why aren’t some of the aliens rising up as community representatives to work with the MNU? Why don’t other nations of the world intervene to offer the aliens a nicer place to live? Why in the world are aliens having sex with human prostitutes? (This seemed like one of the most gratuitous details in the film to me.)

As science fiction, the film never answers these questions – and perhaps can’t answer these questions. It’s a testament to how well-made the film is that you don’t ask them while it’s running. I didn’t start thinking about them until a few hours later. But these questions are troubling, and no amount of apologizing by the fans is going to resolve them. The problem is that the story is meant to be an allegory, not a true work of science fiction, and the sci-fi elements included are a conceit as a result.

If ever a film required another hour on an extended DVD to fill in the plot holes, District 9 is it.

Conclusion

I liked District 9, and I think it’s a worthwhile film. It’s got some depth, and it makes use of aliens to look at race relations in a new way. It’s certainly worth checking out at some point, though I am not sure I’d argue that it’s imperative to see it in the theater.

But would I say it’s a new direction for science fiction? Honestly, no. Science fiction has always been about exploring social issues through unusual means, but in order for it to rise about the level of allegory, it’s got to offer enough explanation that it doesn’t leave the audience wondering at all the loose threads. District 9 appears to be hard sci-fi at first glance, but it’s as soft as Star Wars in the end. And that’s fine, really, because Star Wars is a great film that is also built around a conceit – the idea of presenting a modern myth with sci-fi trappings. But I hope that District 9, like Star Wars and The Matrix and other films before it, does more to influence the visual style of science fiction storytelling and not the story style.

[Movie Reviews] – Gattaca

'Gattaca' written and directed by Andrew Niccol

I’ve been meaning to watch Gattaca for awhile now, but never gotten around to it for some reason. I’d heard it was a well-constructed science fiction film (it’s technically part of the “biopunk” subgenre), but I’ve been burned by so many sci-fi films that I really didn’t want to be let down by this one. Fortunately, it’s available on Netflix Instant Watch, and since I was in the mood to watch a movie last night, I finally gave it a go.

I’m glad I did. Gattaca was a fun experience, and a really well-crafted science fiction piece. I’d say it fits more in the vein of dystopian satire (like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or George Orwell’s 1984) than anything else, but it does have many biopunk elements about it.

In the world of Gattaca, genetic manipulation has resulted in an odd sort of fatalism — the moment you’re born, you are told what your probabilities for death are. It’s much safer, and much more socially beneficial, to create children through a lab, where the best parts of the mother and father can be combined and the genetic deficiencies can be eliminated. The main character, Vincent, is born with a probability of heart failure by the time he’s 30. His parents have a younger brother, Anton, who is designed to be superior to Vincent in every way. Vincent grows up in a society where there is a lot of predjudice against him for being a natural birth, and he is told that he’ll never be able to achieve his true dream: to be an astronaut. But Vincent doesn’t accept his fate, and when he realizes that he is capable of beating his brother in a swimming race by sheer determination and will, he leaves his family and finds his way into Gattaca, the mission control center for space shuttle launches.

Vincent starts off as a janitor, but eventually finds a way to infiltrate the organization. Gattaca conducts regular urine, blood and hair follicle tests to ensure that its people are legitimate — the best and the brightest, not genetic inferiors. Vincent’s way around this is to use a “borrowed ladder” – he partners with a man named Jerome who is genetically superior, but who has lost the use of his legs in an accident. (In this world, invalids are also looked down upon, particularly when they’re supposed to be genetically superior.) Vincent’s job is to pretend to be Jerome so he can become a navigator aboard a mission to the moon of Titan. Jermoe agrees to supply Vincent with all the genetic material needed to pull off the ruse in exchange for a cut of Vincent’s salary.

Unfortunately, a week before Vincent’s mission is scheduled to take off, a murder occurs, and a police sweep finds an eyelash that links him to the crime. His ruse becomes much  more tense as the police begin more aggressive DNA sweeps, and Vincent knows it’s only a matter of time before he’ll be discovered. All he has to do is make it one more week until his shuttle takes off, and nothing will matter anymore. But unfortunately, one of the detectives has a suspicion about what’s really going on… and he’s determined to bring Vincent to justice, even if Vincent didn’t commit the actual murder.

Gattaca is really more of a cautionary tale than a futurist film, and while the sterile, harsh world of the film seems believable enough while you’re watching it, the idea of a society obsessed with genetic probabilities is a little far-fetched. But the idea of the film — that human achievement is greater than any probability determined by scientific understanding — is profound, and the way the film is constructed makes for an interesting series of revelations about the characters.

One of the more interesting things going on in the background involves a woman, Irene, who has the same heart condition that Vincent does, but in a much milder form. This condition doesn’t proclude her from working at Gattaca, but it does prevent her from going into space, no matter how capable she may be. Irene is so mired in the probabilities of death that she believes them. Once she learns what Vincent is, her entire world opens up to a new range of possibilities.

This film was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, and it’s the only one he’s done that’s been what I would call “hard sci-fi.” His follow-up film, The Truman Show, was also very good, though much softer and less realistic. S1m0ne, a movie about a film producer who creates a complete digital film star, was really lacking in plot development. I never got around to seeing Lord of War or The Terminal, though I’m told it neither has any hint of science fiction. I’m hoping Niccol delivers another film like Gattaca down the road — it’s one of the most consistent hard science fiction films I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it’s not based on a book or cribbed from another film makes it all the more appealing.

Sean Recommends: If you have Netflix, watch it instantly. It’s worth the 105 minutes you’ll put into it. If not, rent it or buy it on Amazon for a few bucks. It’s worth it.