District 9 (2009)
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District
9 (2009)
This is a
wholly remarkable film, Politically Charged, speaking of Global Issues, but
potent because it kept a narrowly Local Focus. Unlike most fictions about the Chaos
of much of sub-Saharan Africa that are supposed to speak of the News of the
World, it isn’t set in some Fictional Country but a very specific Time-and-Place.
The nation is South Africa, the town, though unnamed, was likely Soweto mixed
with another town, Alexandera (it was filmed in Soweto, as Alexandra was more
violent at-that-time). It’s a subtle Alternate History buttressing and un-subtle
narrative, starting with Aliens arriving on Earth in 1982, and their presence in
South Africa may have preserved the Apartheid system (officially dismantled in
the Real World in 1994), but the film makes a point that the mess laid out
before us is as much post-Apartheid as it was Apartheid-inspired.
The film is
about Xenophobia, Segregation, and Official Contempt for, and Exploitation of, and
Refugees/Migrants. These Refugees aren’t Human; some ill-defined disaster left
their Spaceship crippled over the Shanty Town/Slum that they were relocated
into. There’s Logical Flaws here, the Spaceship, now emptied of its Alien Occupants,
still hovers in the sky, so why can’t it fly away? How were the Aliens forced
to evacuate the Spaceship also unaddressed. A few more similar illogics emerge
later, but the film’s strong Narrative Drive effectively smooths them over. The
Aliens live in demeaning conditions while a Private Corporation, Multi-National
United (MNU), Profits from looting the Aliens’ Technology. Apparently set in
2009, it concerns the Unjust System reaching a Breaking Point, covering a short
timeframe which harkens that all the tables are about to be turned.
The
Writer/Director Neill Blomkamp (he co-Scripted with Terri Tatchell) grew up in Johannesburg,
South Africa, right next to Soweto, but left that Nation for Canada when he was
18-years-old. He described his hometown as “this amazing, racially charged,
powder-keg city — an urban prison.”
Actor Sharlto
Copley, a High School friend of Blomkamp who was cast in this film’s lead role,
added that among his peers at that time, “there wasn’t much political
conversation … We were all just sheltered from what was going on, and it was
only looking back that you realized, God, that’s how it was.”
Blomkamp was
born in 1979, and his film explicitly references events before his birth, the
Group Areas Act of 1966, with forced removal of 60,000 people from District 6
in Cape Town after it was declared "Whites Only" under the Law (so
the title, “District 9” really means “Someplace Far Away from White People”). Most of those forcibly relocated ended up in yet
another Town, Gugulethu, causing crippling Overcrowding in a place of little Infrastructure,
and even today, that town remains deeply impoverished and violent (it has been cited
as one of the Fifty Most Violent Cities in the World). Gugulethu’s residents
became known as “Gugs,” which inspired the denigrating nickname for this film’s
Aliens, “Prawns.” These forced relocations would continue for decades, leading
to Separation of Families as Black South Africans were dumped
farther-and-farther away from where they could find work, and was enforced by
the notorious Passbook Laws, which filled South Africa’s Prisons with men who
had committed no Crime except walking on the wrong street. But both Gugulethu
and Soweto are over-crowded Shantytowns/Slums created mostly by South Africa’s
own Internal Refugees, while the Slum in this film has not only Alien Refugees,
but Nigerian ones, thus the connection to the Town of Alexandra.
And much of
this is quite current even in post-Apartheid South Africa, because though now a
Pluralistic Democracy, the Nation is profoundly troubled. Forced Relocations
still happen, not because of Racial Laws, but because of a chaotic response to
the need to Modernize and improve Infrastructure. The 1966 Law created a Housing
Crisis that has not abated and attempts to address it haven’t always gone well.
In 2004, Symphony Bay, near Cape Town, became the location of the N2 Gateway
Housing Project, planning on providing better homes to 20,000 people who had
lived in shacks for generations. As ambitious as it was, it was a drop in the
bucket compared to the vicinity of Cape Town having a backlog of 400,000
Housing Units. There were fights over who was entitled to the new housing,
construction delays, and unauthorized people started moving into unfinished
buildings. The unauthorized became known as “Pavement Dwellers” and were an
obstacle to both finishing the construction and the approved new residents taking
over those properties, so the Government authorized the Mass Eviction of them.
This was unfolding as “District 9” was released and I found Press Release from
the Pavement Dwellers, who had Organized to Block the Evictions:
The Centre on Housing Rights and
Evictions (COHRE) has sent a letter to Mayor Dan Plato calling on the City to
reconsider the eviction of the Symphony Way community to Blikkiesdorp.
We all face evictions from the City of Cape Town – for a
second time. The first time was when we were evicted from the N2 Gateway houses
without being given any suitable alternative place to stay. This is why we have
been occupying Symphony way for 1 year and 8 months.
The City wants to put us in Blikkiesdorp but we refuse to move there. In
Blikkiesdorp our children will not be safe. There are too many crimes happening
and children in that relocation camp are being raped all the time. Different
kinds of gangs and drug-houses operate in Blikkiesdorp …
Last week, a national newspaper even compared Blikkiesdorp to
the concentration camps holding aliens featured in the new hit movie “District 9”.
We refuse to be treated like aliens in our own country! This
is why we say Asiyi eBlikkiesdorp! We will not go to tin-cans!
Writer/Director
Blomkamp acknowledged this in an interview, but he referred to a related crisis
in yet another location:
“There was a
very weird cross over between the film and the reality of filming. We filmed in
an area called Chiawelo, which is a suburb of Soweto, which is sort of a suburb
of Johannesburg. And there is this thing in Africa called RDP housing, which
are government-subsidised housing. Where they will build you a brick house in a
different area of the city. And you get put on a waiting list if you're a South
African impoverished resident, until you are able to get one of these houses. So,
the area we filmed the movie in, what plays as District 9, every single
resident in that area was being removed to be put into RDP housing. Although
not all of them had been given the green light on the RDP housing, most of them
had, but all of them were going to be moved, whether they liked it or not. So,
we ended up with this open piece of land with all these shacks on it ... each
day we came to set, there were fewer and fewer people.” In separate interview, Blomkamp described the
place as "actually looks like Chernobyl … nuclear apocalyptic wasteland."
This film emerged
from two different paths converging. Blomkamp was already an admired FX and
Animation Professional, and produced a short-film, “Alive in Joburg” (2002, “Joburg”
is a nickname for Johannesburg) which laid out the premise for this film as a
Mock TV Newscast, combining Real News footage and remarkably good, extreme
low-budget, FX. Said Blomkamp, "On one side of my mind you have this place
with a crazy racial background, and on the other side of my brain you have this
science-fiction geek, and then one day the two just mixed, and I decided I
wanted to do science fiction in South Africa."
This caught
the attention of Internationally Renowned Producer/Director Peter Jackson, who
tapped Blomkamp to Direct a project that was ultimately never realized, and
feature-film version of the video game “Halo” (game launched 2001). After that
project failed to materialize, Jackson became one of the Producers for this
film. Though set and shot entirely in South Africa, and with a South African Cast,
it isn’t actually a South African film, as it was wholly financed out of the
USA and New Zealand. It was made on a mid-level budget but looks like a much
more expensive epic.
The
specificity of the setting, a garbage-strewn, graffiti-covered, multi-Racial
(really multi-Species) Ghetto, is so powerfully evoked, it grants the film a
potent originality even though it doesn’t hide it’s borrowing from other films,
both inside and outside the SF Genre, like “The Fly” (1986), “Blackhawk Down” (2001),
and maybe most of all from a completely tonally-different film, “Alien Nation”
(1988) which features similar looking ships hovering over a great city and the
difficulties of the Alien Refugees integrating into Human Societies. The comparisons
to “Alien Nation” are instructive, because the earlier film faltered as it
tried to squeeze too many ideas into its 91-minute running time (the film
became as short-lived TV series in 1989, followed by a string of TV movies, and
the more luxurious amount of Story-telling time helped the original film’s
truncated narrative a lot). With “District 9,” there’s a handful of complex
ideas introduced quickly and economically, and as soon as the audience has grasped
them, the film relaxes into an exciting Shoot-‘Em-Up. And there’s nothing at
all wrong with a Shoot-‘Em-Up.
It opens
with Pseudo-Documentary footage very similar to “Live from Joburg” and focusing
on one contemptable MNU Bureaucrat, Wikus Van De Merwe (the above-mentioned Copley,
it was his first feature film role, though he had a bit part in “Live from
Joburg,” and was the Lead again in later Blomkamp project, he’s great, basic
carries the film on his shoulders). Character Wikus isn’t especially competent,
he’s a Desk Jockey recently promoted because of Nepotism, he married the Boss’
daughter (Wikus’ father-in-law is Piet Smit (Louis Minnaar) and his wife is
Tania (Vanessa Haywood)). MNU have profited much from the Refugees, but still
don’t have the Aliens’ Weapons’ Technology, which can’t operate without the user
having Prawn DNA. Wikus’ job if to search for these Weapons and clues to how to
use them, but mostly to pressure the Aliens to sign paperwork to relocate them
again, to a District 10, even farther afield, because the Black, Human,
Refugees in District 9 don’t want the unappealing-looking Prawns among them
anymore than the Whites want either the Prawns or the Blacks nearby. The Prawns
are large, icky, four-limbed Crustaceans, with wriggling worms where their
noses are supposed to be. "Prawn" is a reference to the Parktown
Prawn, a King Cricket species considered a pest in South Africa.
Writer/Director
Blomkamp’s FX background was vital for the final effect of the film, the
sophisticated CGI doesn’t have the Prawns hidden in shadows, but in full
sunlight, much akin to ground-breaking visuals in “Transformers” (2007) but
serving much more mature purposes. Said Blomkamp, "I wanted the image to
feel incredibly raw and unmanipulated, almost like it came straight from the
camera sensors right onto the screen. So instead of setting the shot up and
really making a big deal of the effects and then going back to normal footage,
I wanted it to feel as if the effects were completely part of the scene."
The Cinematographer
was Trent Opaloch and this was his first feature, and it earned him a BATFA
nomination. Since then he’s become a frequent collaborator with Blomkamp and
best known for his work in Superhero movies. He observed, "Neill comes
from that whole world and works very closely with all the visual effects
supervisors. And, as we've done a fair amount with Image Engine, it's a very
clear line of communication from us on set to their guys." This approach
can be "challenging as a cinematographer [but] the end result pays off in
realism and a certain energy. Ultimately, you just have to embrace it and run
with it … Neill is always very involved in that and very hands-on.”
One can’t
but conclude that Blomkamp’s Characterization of Wikus was strongly influenced
by Political Philosopher Hanna Arendt’s book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report
on the Banality of Evil” (1963). In the early part of the film, Wikus’ only
skills seem to be (to quote Critic Maryann Johanson) “whitewashery and
paperworking over legal niceties” and his smile doesn’t even quiver when Alien
Eggs are torched by a Bloodthirsty Colonel Koobus Venter (David James).
Wikus will
eventually prove a Hero, but only after a long a painful journey that begins
when he accidently breathes in a gas manufactured by the Aliens which has the
remarkable effect of rewriting his DNA, turning him slowly into one of the
Prawns. At this point, Wikus is forced to Wear the Other Shoe; he’s now a
despised minority of one, Hunted by Koobus because he now carries the secret of
using the Alien Weapons, and by the local Nigerian Crime Lord, Obesandjo (Eugene Wanangwa Khumbanyiwa), who believes that eating Wikus’ more Alien parts will give
him Superpowers.
The Pseudo-Documentary-style
is dropped at this point, and Wilkus finds he has only one Ally, a Prawn who
can speak English and was given the name Christopher Johnson by Authorities (Jason
Cope, who also performs in Motion Capture as virtually all the CGI Prawns, as
well as a Human News Cameraman). Christopher who needs Wikus for his own Agenda,
he has been able to synthesize a way to fix the hovering Spaceship, and in
exchange for a way back to the Spaceship, he promises to return with a way to
return Wilus to Human form.
The key
irony of the film is that the less-Human Wikus appears, the more he expresses substantive
Human Virtues. The film ends with the Good Guys, Wikus and Christopher, winning
and we’re convinced that Christopher will try and keep his promise to Wikus but
it’s still a pretty dark ending. Can Christopher fulfill his sincere promise? And
when the Spaceship returns, how will the Prawn Armada treat the Humans that
have so abused their own kind for so long? The last image is of Wikus, now
fully Prawn, utterly alone, sitting on a pile of trash and holding a paper
flower he made for his wife.
“District 9”
was a Critical and Commercial triumph (USA Box Office was $150 million against
a $30 million-dollar budget, roughly the same Box Office as “Terminator
Salvation” (also 2009) which cost $200 million to make) and went on to be
nominated for four Oscars: Best Film, FX, Editing, and Adapted Screenplay.
Blomkamp’s career seemed assured, but his next two movies were far less loved:
“Elysium” (2013), which was hugely expensive and not very good; and “Chappie” (2015)
which was a Critical and Financial failure, but I liked it a lot. After that
were two more features that disappeared largely without notice that I haven’t
seen.
Though the
film is powerful in its condemnation of Racism and a host of other Irrational Prejudices,
I must admit the film is ripe with its own. Some will be obvious to the causal
audience in the West; others are very South-Africa-specific and need to be
explained as they are rooted in that Nation’s History, largely unknown in the
West even though the Anti-Apartheid movement was an obsession of College-aged
Liberals in the USA in the 1980s.
What we now
call South Africa was Conquered by two competing White Imperial Powers, the
British and the Dutch. The British were the over-all winners, the Dutch, who
became known as the Boers or the Afrikaners, had a share of the Power, while
the majority, Black Native South Africans, were disenfranchised. The Boers deeply
resented British Rule, because within the Ruling White Minority, the Boers had
the force of numbers but much less power.
The Boer
Wars were a string interconnected conflicts between the English and Dutch in South
Africa that stretched from about 1880 to 1914. These wars are bitterly
remembered, the phrase “Concentration Camp,” was coined then, that was where
the Brits dumped the Boers. The War featured the first large-scale use of slaughterous
machine-guns, which the British had and the Boers mostly didn’t. The British
had a “Scorched Earth” policy regarding Civilian Boer Populations. These
conflicts scarred the emerging Nation deeply, tossing many Boers into multi-generational
of Poverty, and the already disenfranchised Blacks deeper still.
Boer Wars ended
with the beginning of WWI (1914-1918) and during that conflict, the Boers mostly
refused to side with the British against the Germans. They refused again in WWII
(1939-1945), and their resistance to fighting the Nazis is of special note, nearly
causing yet another Boer War, as the Nazi-Allied Boers of the Ossewabrandway
committed numerous acts of Sabotage on behalf of Hitler in South Africa. These
unapologetic Nazis would form the Nationalist Party immediately after WWII, and
after winning the 1948 Elections, started instituting the polices soon known as
Apartheid in an already deeply segregated Nation.
The first Apartheid
Laws targeted Miscegenation in 1949, and the Official Racial Classification
System became Law in 1950. Between 1960 (so even before the above-mentioned and
notorious 1966 Law) and 1983, 3.5 million Black Africans were forced from their
homes because of ever-stricter Segregation Laws. Feeding into these , which
mostly targeted Native Blacks, was Anti-Immigrant Animus. As South Africa was
enjoying a post-WWII Economic Boom which raised most Boers out of poverty, but
also attracting a cheap Labor-Force from other, poorer, sub-Saharan African
Countries. In the USA, in the 1980s, discussion of Apartheid focused on White v
Black, sometimes addressing the intertribal conflicts within the Native Blacks
(the anti-Apartheid Political Party ANC was mostly rooted among the Thembu people,
while its main competitors during the Apartheid years, SWAPO, were Ovambo, and
they were often more violent against each other than towards than the White Rulers),
but the ever-growing population of even more-downtrodden Migrant Labor was
rarely addressed outside South Africa itself.
South Africa
was under heavy Censorship Laws during the Apartheid years, so films addressing
the Evils of the System had to be made in England or the USA. These films generally
had a British Bias, as if England’s Imperialism had nothing to do with the Nation’s
then-current Realties. The nice, White, Liberal, Heroes of those films almost
always showed an English-leaning while the Villains were Dirty Boers. The Hero
of “The Wilby Conspiracy” (1975) was played by Englishman Michael Caine. “Cry
Freedom” (1987) focused on Real-Life Donald Woods, a South African of English-descent,
was played by Kevin Klien of the USA (formerly an oppressed British Colony but now,
all is forgiven). The Hero of “A Dry White Season” (1989) was played by
Canadian Donald Sutherland (Canada was part of the British Empire until only seven-years
before that film’s release). The only nice South African in “Lethal Weapon 2”
(also 1989) was played by Englishwoman Patsy Kensit. Even this film’s Director Blomkamp’s
family must have been English-leaning as they Emigrated to the just-out-of-Empire
Canada. But it should be noted that South Africa’s last Apartheid President,
the guy who, in 1994, negotiated its dismantling the System with the first
post-Apartheid President, Nelson Mandella, wasn’t of English-descent but a Boer,
F. W. de Klerk, and English wasn’t even his first language.
The name of “District
9’s” Hero surname, van der Merwe, is significant. Van der Merwe is a common of
Boer surname, and there is a Genre of Jokes about how stupid the Boers are (akin
to Polish-Jokes in the USA) called “van der Merwe Jokes.” An example:
Jan van de Merwe is a South African farmer and he really
wants a shiny new tractor but he can't afford it! So, he makes a plan: he is
going to win the lottery and use the money to buy a new tractor. He is also a
religious man, so every night before going to sleep he kneels by his bed and
prays, "Please God, please let me win the lottery! I really need this new
tractor I just need to win the lottery!"
Every night. For weeks. For months van der Merwe prays to win the lottery,
until one day, God speaks to him.
"Jan, my son. I have heard your prayers and I have seen that your soul is
pure. I am trying to help you win the lottery, I've been doing everything I can
but I just can't do it on my own!
“Look, it's been months Jan, could you just... meet me halfway... and buy a
fuckin' ticket already?"
Despite Blomkamp’s
good intentions, I guess everyone would spot that Nigerian Refugees/Migrants
are treated pretty shabbily by this film, they are all Prostitutes, Gangsters,
and/or Cannibals. It should also be noted that the name of Crazed Nigerian
Crime Lord, Obesandjo, is suspiciously similar to that of former Nigerian
President Olusegun Obasanjo, who his hugely admired in his country, except for
the half of that country that grew to despise him. As a result, Nigeria blocked
the film from being shown there.
For the
Pseudo-Documentary parts of the film, Blomkamp utilized Man-on-the-Street
interviews, that were, well, actual Man-on-the-Street Interviews:
“I was
asking black South Africans about black Nigerians and Zimbabweans. That's
actually where the idea came from was there are aliens living in South Africa,
I asked ‘What do you feel about Zimbabwean Africans living here?’ And those
answers — they weren't actors, those are real answers.”
Trailer:
District 9 - Official Trailer (HD)
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