District 9

However tight the action in District 9 is or just how well it propels the movie along on its sick journey, the fact remains that the dimensionality of the characters and their arcs change with each sequence. We have difficulty in developing any sense of sympathy, other than the false, Hallmark movie-type heartstring-plucking that is accomplished with a doe-eyed alien (“Christopher Johnson”) and his adorable little son trying to find a way home. By this point, we’ve already realized this isn’t E.T.

As worker ants whose queen is dead, Christopher’s fellow aliens have been stripped of any sense of intuition or purpose; their hyper-focus is replaced with aimlessness and uselessness. So, when Christopher miraculously develops a detailed plan—twenty years in the making—he immediately stops his course of action to help and potentially sacrifice his life for a human that has only been using him and has been treating him with little more than disdain. This feels more like the low-rate manipulations of a young Spielberg, not the sticky, young David Cronenberg or the Dead Alive-era Peter Jackson we’ve been presented with, thus far.

Luckily, District 9 has an alluring twist in its “human” protagonist Wikus Van De Merwe; he must change both morally and physically—according to the rules of science fiction and action movies—in order to save himself and humanity. Of course, this protagonist is the epitome of a loser. Wikus isn’t an anti-hero; he isn’t even a semi-hero. He merely makes do with what he has and returns to his selfish ways again and again. His true humanity only sticks its head out when he’s less a man and more a walking example of horror movies past—the flower motif is a nice callback to the original and literal beast of burden, Frankenstein’s monster—which again shifts the sympathetic nature found within an ordinary science-fiction movie. The focus of his character arc is one of the film’s biggest attributes. As an audience, we always have a great need to feel a connection to our main character, so for him to be this way keeps us believing that the movie will end a certain way. It doesn’t.

What is so satisfying about first meeting these alien creatures is that they aren’t omniscient beings from another world here to teach everyone a lesson about life. There isn’t any grandiose sense of menace, either. They’re just dumb and absolutely repulsive. Identifying with their plight of simply existing within this new planet is more difficult, conceptually, yet also truer to reality. It’s so easy to merely pity when there is nobility attached to those oppressed. Then again, when we’re forced to confront the reality of the situation and those beasts we can’t understand, it presents as being closer to the truth. Clearly, District 9 has its faults, which makes giving it a full-hearted recommendation impossible. But, I am excited to see what a director, who has done so much with so little, can do when he finds the focus of the message along with the heart. The splatter is just the icing on the cake.

Pages: 1 2