Zombos Says: Very Good
The striking thing about District 9, the expanded
version of Neill Blonkamp’s short science fiction movie Alive in Joburg,
is how it reworks familiar plot elements from movies like Alien Nation, The Fly, and The Matrix, cements them
together with tableaux of apartheid and Nazi-like genetic experimentation, and
still gleefully gets away with blowing lots of things up with popcorn-movie
zeal.
Important to both the incidental social
commentary and the loud action is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who
makes us first dislike him for what he blindly stands for, then like him for
what he learns to stand for. All of this does not make District 9 a great film, just
a very good one; lying somewhere between Armond White's energetically
overreaching discontent with its "sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema"
substance, and Roger Ebert's ultimate disappointment that it "remains
space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction."
It is to District
9's credit that it dares to place more emphasis on its pop cinema approach,
and less on those higher realms, to deliver pulp science fiction that, blow for
blow, gets its deeper message across without preachiness or prompting moral
revelation above the basic template of blood splatter, bullets, and bombs.
Social commentary has all been done effectively and artistically before,
frankly, to the point where it no longer really
matters it be spelled out for us yet again in a movie that flows much better without
it. Sometimes a movie should be just that, a movie; and not held to a higher
accountability.
One aspect remaining uncluttered from higher
philosophical exploration is the relationship that grows between the commonly—and
somewhat derogatorily—named Van De Merwe, and the non-human alien with oddly
human attributes, Christopher Johnson. When both must work together, each
desperately needs something from the other, or die separately, everything else
flows. It is this working together against an aggression now directed at both of them that District 9 manages to convey
its social commentary in an entertainingly lively way.
Like 1988's
Alien Nation, whose Newcomers
were stranded in Los Angeles, the derogatorily named Prawns are stranded in
Johannesburg, South Africa. But where the more human-looking Newcomers were
assimilating, albeit slowly, into human society, after twenty years of not
integrating well with the native population (they are mug-ugly and have
seriously bad hygiene issues), the Prawns are herded into District 9, a
government camp turned slum, where they are exploited by Nigerian gangsters who
sell them cat food for technology, and quietly experimented on by the MNU; a
privately-run defense and security contractor looking to harness alien
technology and weaponry. But alien technology requires alien DNA to work, thus
rendering their weapons useless to humans. Van De Merwe, through his
clumsiness, provides MNU with the solution.
That solution is to harvest Van De Merwe's
changing genetic material. All of it. After exposure to the alien ship's fuel
source during a forced relocation of the Prawns, he begins changing into one.
The transformation he goes through is similar to Jeff Goldblum's transformation
from man to insect in 1986's The
Fly, loose teeth-pulling, changing limbs, and fear included.
Fighting capture from the MNU, Van De Merwe is
captured by the Nigerian gang. A black market has sprung up between the Prawns
and the Nigerians, trading technology for cat food, which the Prawns love to
eat. The gang's leader figures he can power the alien technology if he eats Van
De Merwe's alien-mutated arm. At this point, the only person who does not want
a piece of him is his wife, who has been led to believe his transformation
results from having sex with a female Prawn, as preposterous as that may sound
given their physical attributes.
All this explosive aggression culminates in Van
De Merwe donning an Iron Man and The Matrix-styled exo-suit.
Strangely, although the techno-suit is designed for an alien whose body is
clearly non-human, the technology fits him like a glove. The Nigerian gang, MNU
force, and Van De Merwe duke it out as Christopher Johnson tries to return to
the mother ship, providing much opportunity for gory body explosions, vibrant
vehicle explosions, and shrapnel-flying bomb explosions.
The movie unfolds after the events have taken place, using
interviews and news footage mixed in with shown-in-the-moment situations; not
shaky-cam, not cinema verite, but a smattering of the two, handled in such a
way as to keep up the momentum for tension-building. Interestingly, critics
have spent more time on its shallow apartheid and sociological underpinnings,
and not enough on the movie's more interesting mechanics.
Moving between third-party retrospections on Van
De Merwe's behavior and showing his panic brought about by his predicament, along
with those pop cinema trashy explosive situations, Blonkamp and Terry Tatchell
(co-screenplay) accomplish something unique: Van De Merwe's pain and
hopelessness, even the Prawn's exploited and hopeless situation, in spite of
their complete alienness, becomes personal and realistic for us, even through
its science-fiction artificiality.
Fans of Stargate SG-1 will recall the need for
alien DNA to power ancient alien weaponry in order to save earth from the Goa'uld.
I wonder if Blonkamp is a fan of that television series?
Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.
