George Twigg takes us to the all too real world of ‘District 9′

One of the main tenets of science fiction is that monolithic spaceships hovering ominously over major cities are rarely good news. Usually, the appearance of such a craft is followed by a brief period of acute tension, and then the destruction of a major landmark, à la ‘Independence Day’. The audience knows what to expect in these situations, and sure enough, ‘District 9′, the latest outlandish tale to hit the big screen, begins with a hulking vessel casting its immense shadow over modern-day Johannesburg. The stage is apparently set for yet another showdown between the marauding alien invaders and the plucky human resistance. However, be warned; if you go to watch ‘District 9′ expecting this sort of set-up, then you will be disappointed -  but only briefly, and then you’ll discover something much better.

Sci-fi as a genre is often maligned by those who aren’t already fans, and in truth, quite a lot of films of this type have little to recommend them; if a sci-fi picture is less than stellar, it’s really just a morass of technical jargon, weird creatures and implausible escapades. But all of the above can be excused, or even exalted, if the final product is compelling. ‘Alien’ is a prime example of great sci-fi, as indeed was the recent reboot of the ailing Star Trek franchise. That is, of course, to say nothing of three little films that George Lucas made a generation ago. The annals of cinema history also contain less typical movies that reject the convention of the battle between good and evil; in Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris’ or, more recently, Danny Boyle’s ‘Sunshine’, the enemy is the celestial void itself. These all differ greatly in their various components, but they have a common coherence and clarity of vision. Above all, they take a great story and tell it well, and after all, this is what allows a film to become a classic.

However, initial signs did not exactly point to ‘District 9′ attaining a place in the pantheon of sci-fi classics. Granted, it boasts ‘Lord of the Rings’ director Peter Jackson as Executive Producer. Also, the marketing campaign has been impressive; when I went to see the film, the doors of my home town’s benighted duoplex were covered in signs bearing the legend, ‘Humans Only’ (although considering where I come from, they might just have been pieces of essential legislation). But the budget for the film was a mere $30 million, a fraction of what big-money action films like ‘Transformers’ cost to produce. It is the first full-length feature from 30-year old director Neill Blomkamp, whose previous crowning achievement was that Citroën advert with the dancing car. It was made in South Africa, a country that has virtually no pedigree when it comes to visually arresting action cinema. The star, Sharlto Copley, had never acted on screen before, and although he possesses a wealth of directing, producing and writing credits, his mimetic experience before being cast by Blomkamp was limited to amateur dramatics.

Sharlto Copley as Wikus

‘District 9′ really shouldn’t work. But it does – gloriously, majestically, powerfully. The film opens with Wikus van de Merwe (Copley) nervously preparing for a documentary interview, fiddling with his microphone and wearing clothes that suggest he is a frequenter of the South African equivalent of Jack Wills. From the first few seconds we can gauge two things. Firstly, that at least the opening part of the film will utilise the increasingly common faux-documentary style, which lends authenticity and immediacy to proceedings, and even allows them to finish with the kind of “So-and-so is currently…” notices that are usually best left in Animal House. Secondly, that our supposed hero is nothing of the sort. ‘District 9′ may have stunning visual effects and battle sequences, but the real locus of the film is the character of Wikus. He occupies a space somewhere between nonentity and everyman. He is the antithesis of the Ripley or Arnie figure in sci-fi of the past; a man not raised to his eminence because of his intrinsic merits, but because his father-in-law owns the company. Essentially, he is overpromoted, and ends up paying for it. A good action hero is reliant upon engaging the empathy, and sometimes the sympathy, of the audience. Sharlto Copley was cast as Wikus purely through being a friend of Blomkamp, and, as I have stated above, his previous acting experience was minimal. However, I can say with some confidence that the director’s decision to take a chance on a complete unknown may well come to be recognised as one of the most inspired pieces of cinematic nepotism of all time. Copley’s performance is magnificent; in the film’s opening act, he captures his character’s simultaneous initial shock and excitement at his new job, his almost childlike curiosity at discovering alien machinery, and his slightly sadistic bent. Later on, his portrayal of a desperate man on the run is almost pitch-perfect.

But if brilliant acting was all that was required to inculcate a character with the empathy of those who watch them, then we’d all have been rooting for the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’. A great performance is not a great movie in itself, which brings me onto the story. I have alluded to parts of the premise above, but here it is. An alien spaceship arrives in 1980s South Africa, carrying a cargo of starving creatures known as ‘prawns’, who are resettled in ‘District 9′, a purpose-built Johannesburg slum. Tensions rise between species, which leads to the government moving the prawns to a new township dozens of miles outside the city. MNU gains the contract to undertake this mass displacement, and Wikus is selected to head the operation on the ground. He accidentally comes into contact with a mysterious substance, and finds himself slowly turning into one of the aliens, which makes him very useful to MNU, as he is now the only man on Earth who can operate the prawn weaponry they’ve been hoarding.

Sounds simple, but the plot is a frame for something much more profound. One thing that is obvious from the comments of the documentarial talking heads is the extent to which the prawns are regarded as subhuman beings. They are totally segregated, and an early barrage of rapid-fire images firmly plant the spectre of apartheid in the viewer’s mind. In this alternate universe, whites and blacks coexist peacefully, because they have a third race to oppress – the prawns. In the recent Star Trek film, the villain, Nero, is a vicious sadist, and in the course of the exposition we come to learn a great amount of detail about where he comes from, what he intends to do, and his motivation for doing it. Kirk, Spock and the crew think he is evil, but crucially view him as an equal combatant. No such luck for the prawns, who are Nero’s opposites; while his ship oozes with primeval menace, theirs reeks of disease and decay. All we know is that they are stranded, and fundamentally unknowable. In ‘District 9′, one government interviewee admits, “We didn’t have a plan”, and so the prawns have simply been absorbed into human society, and expected to understand human conventions about property, the rule of law and civil obedience.

As the devastation in the film shows, this has clearly failed. Blomkamp goes out of his way to show the ‘humanity’ of the prawns. The primary alien protagonist of the movie is a scientist assigned the slave name of Christopher Johnson, who ends up as Wikus’ main accomplice in his flight from the authorities. There is real pathos in his simple, E.T.-like desire to go home and show his son a planet he has never seen, and other than Spielberg’s classic, I can’t think of a picture in which the alien elicits this much sympathy. His insectoid figure is wonderfully animated, not so much in the resolution of the CGI (George Lucas, take note), but in his pain-wracked movements and haunted eyes. Credit must also go to the actor Jason Cope for a remarkable vocal performance of clicks and whistles. Rather than being the menace to society he is viewed as, he is much more ‘human’ than the conglomerate of Machiavellian executives, psychotic mercenaries and Wikus van de Merwes that comprise MNU.

Wikus, it has to be said, goes some way towards redressing the balance. Initially, he is a prime example of a cog in the machinery of the new apartheid. He says he wants to avoid bloodshed, but then comments on the sound of alien eggs burning as being “like popcorn”, with a disturbing mixture of glee and incomprehension. He wishes to help the prawns settle down in South Africa, but only on the terms of his employers. He is initially personable when dealing with them, but loses his rag at the slightest hint of non-cooperation. In short, he is half F.W. de Klerk and half Hendrik Verwoerd. However, in the course of ‘District 9′ he undergoes a bildungsroman-style transformation, moving gradually from buffoon to desperado. It is through his situation that we begin to empathise with him; he may not be perfect, but he doesn’t deserve to be hunted down and etherised upon a table.

 The higher-ups in MNU are wonderfully cynical and cruel, and when Wikus rebels against them, we can’t help but cheer for him. Partly this is because of Copley’s amazing performance, but also it is because he isn’t really an action hero; watch him cower behind desks and fire blindly round corners. He isn’t Rambo; he’s just an ordinary man caught up in a nightmarish scenario. And it has to be said that Wikus’ dystopian four days is rendered particularly vividly. The recent monster movie ‘Cloverfield’ utilised the same hand-held camera work as is used here, and built up almost unbearable tension before the giant beast, which had previously been seen only in glimpses, was revealed in full - and turned out not to be very convincing or frightening.

‘District 9′ is a film of two halves, but as the jerky impressionism of the first half recedes in favour of a more conventional action style, the scenes that make up most of the second half are impressively exciting and visceral; the tension remains, and the pace increases. Heads explode into offal, bodies are vaporised, and at one point an alien ‘walker’ robot actually plucks a rocket-propelled grenade out of the air. The alien technology is all light and chaos, and its effects are enjoyably graphic. In addition to the gripping action scenes are the little touches that so often propel a movie to greatness. The fugitive and half-alien Wikus is wonderfully described by MNU bosses as a “business artefact” – a perfect phrase of corporate newspeak.

Christopher Johnson aside, the prawns are conspicuous by their absence; MNU have not only removed them from the sight of the people of Johannesburg, but of Blomkamp’s camera. The subtitles when they talk are solely for the benefit of the audience, rather than the uncomprehending human characters. There is even room for black comedy at times. It is testament to Blomkamp’s ability as a film-maker (an ability which top Hollywood studios will no doubt have noticed) that his plot includes all this and is still coherent.

However, there are minus points. Probably because of the limited budget, the quality of the acting (Copley aside) is variable, and hence, the hitman pursuing Wikus is not as menacing as he could be, and the phone conversations with his wife have insufficient pathos. The cliché of the slow-motion sequence accompanied by ethereal music is trotted out. The plot has holes, and is also moved forward on a couple of occasions by the sort of cheap coincidences that wouldn’t be out of place in a Shakespeare comedy. Nigerian gangsters exploit the prawns, but they are overtly characterised as depraved and deviant, which is a stereotype that is already prevalent in the media without cinema adding to it. By far the biggest flaw is the dialogue. The early scenes where the aliens are evicted (most of which Copley apparently improvised) are fine, but lines in the second half include, “I don’t know what to believe any more”, “I want everything back the way it was”, “I’m not leaving you here”, and the ubiquitous “Go before I change my mind”. Most unforgivably, Wikus describes his act of rebellion as “a suicide mission”, which should really be obvious at that point; it’s a shame that such an innovative movie contains such hackneyed discourse. The ending is anticlimactic, but is all but forgotten, thanks to the impact of what precedes it.

All this aside, ‘District 9′ is simply a modern sci-fi classic, which is all the more incredible considering that it was made for only $30 million. One wonders what Neill Blomkamp would have come up with if he had had $300 million, but I doubt whether it would have been markedly superior; the key to science fiction, and all cinema, is not in how a picture looks but in how it feels. The strength of vision behind a picture is the main thing, and too many modern blockbusters forget this. Luckily, Blomkamp didn’t, and the result is a strong contender for the best film of the year.