Stuff Billy Likes: “District 9,” Creativity, and the Wrath of God

No recent movie has left me so intellectually unsettled – in a good way – as “District 9″, the new alien/anthropological study/whatever else it is. I can’t stop thinking about it. You probably know the premise of the story by now, if you’re paying attention to pop culture. A gaggle of unattractive aliens show up in a state of distress inside a massive disabled spaceship that comes to rest above Johannesburg – and stays there for about 20 years, like a giant moon. Our mission of mercy goes awry, and eventually the aliens become a reviled nuisance, subject to cruel terrestrial management by a private company that’s a cross between Blackwater and Halliburton.

Much has already been written about the movie, pointing to the South African setting and the grinding relations between human and alien as allegorical reminders of our intractable human social divisions. Fine. But I’m not a big fan of allegory; and I think this movie is way deeper than that. So I want to get an online conversation started about it because, frankly, my wife is sick of listening to me talk about it.

I know that Chuck, for one, was kind of meh about “District 9.” What follows is my pitch for why I hope he’ll give it another shot. For my money, it’s the best, most challenging science fiction movie since “Children of Men,” which it resembles in climax and sensibility, at least. And, strangely enough, it has the potential to get better, if some of what it hints at emerges more fully in the sequel that’s almost inevitable now that it’s a financial success.

Anyway, from now on, I’m going to assume you’ve seen the movie, so consider yourself warned because major spoilers will follow.

Four main points:

1) Of all the vivid scenes in the movie, the cockfight between alien newborns, where one bug-looking critter sticks a spine through another as mature aliens and Nigerian gangsters cheer them on and bet addictive cat food, lingers with me most. And this brief background moment only grows in power because of the articulate little boy alien we come to care for as the movie unfolds. These are babies cockfighting. Think what that means. Babies that will turn into (maybe) this charming little alien pre-teen dressed in scrounged pajamas. (A fabulous costume touch, by the way.) We’re so conditioned by movies like “Starship Troopers” and the “Alien” franchise to think of bug-like aliens as soulless special effects. I love how “District 9″ plays with these motifs to do confounding emotional things with them.

2) Which leads into the biggest mystery in the movie. The aliens brought with them weapons of massive force that only they can wield; they are more athletic than humans. So why are they so passive and accepting of their situation? And why, when we humans have learned to largely understand their language, when we control their lives, have we been unable to get them to tell us where they come from or how their culture and technology work? This is addressed in exactly one line during some of the “documentary” footage worked into the film. The speculation is that the more than a million aliens we found on the disabled ship were part of a sort of a mentally deficient worker class, whose leaders died due to illness of some sort or jettisoned from the ship at the time it showed up over South Africa. Presumably, Christopher Johnson, the main character and lone smart alien we come to know, is part of that leadership class, as is his little boy.

It’s telling that his plan, once he gets the command module working, is to get the hell off earth with his child and a one other friend who gets offed early on. He appears to have literally no contact with the “worker” aliens. The million-plus suffering countrymen or whatever they are don’t really factor into his thinking. It’s not until he sees first hand the experiments that Halliburton, errr, MNU is carrying out that he begins to worry about “his people”. As he stands over the mutilated bodies motionless, we think we’re seeing him overcome by horror. But actually, I think he’s having a moment of conscience, like Wikus has at the end. I think he’s always seen the worker aliens as alien as we have. Or at least that’s my theory, that he’s an elite member of a highly powerful and advanced slave/caste society, where the workers are mentally disabled or limited somehow. That’s a really interesting dynamic to throw as a wrench into your allegory machinery.

Now, it could be that I’m overthinking this and that what I consider a mystery is just a flaw in the movie’s logic. But I don’t think so. We’ll see.

3) The guy who plays Wikus should get an academy award nomination. A lot of commenters have talked about how bumbling and not up to the alien management job Wikus is. But that’s not right. He’s quite an effective big company operational bureaucrat. He knows the rules; and how to improvise them when they get in the way. His subordinates like him. His wife loves him. He is the embodiment of Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil.” He basically learns not to see the aliens he deals with. Then he makes one big mistake, and things flip. He finds himself unseen as the MNU guys figure out that he can fire alien weapons. The scene where he tries to resist firing the weapons and then pathetically tries to negotiate with the scientist absently shocking him is stunning. Go back and see it, Chuck. Watch how the Wikus character reassesses everything on the fly and then realizes simultaneously that no one gives a shit – and the genuine terror that causes. A tremendous performance.

4) Finally, everyone in the movie is a scavenger – the aliens, MNU, the Nigerians. Wikus. Even Christopher. They all dwell in a world devoid of creativity and selflessness. MNU isn’t even building its own weapons; its trying to figure out how to scavenge the aliens’ stuff. This is where “District 9″ most evokes “Children of Men.” It’s about the hellishness of existence that lacks the hope inherent in creation. A more religious guy than me might call such a world Godless.

But unlike “Children of Men,” there’s no direct mention – not one – of God or organized religion in “District 9.” (Shamanism doesn’t count.) That’s a conspicuous absence in a movie concerning a jarring reassessment of our species’ role in the universe – unless you consider what happens to human bodies when Wikus and Christopher start firing these alien DNA weapons acts of “God,” defined as a power beyond our comprehension.

I hate torture/gore/sadism porn movies. Hated Seven. Won’t see Saw or Hostel. But there is something going on with the violence in District 9. I felt a visceral Old Testament thrill when the energy guns started exploding MNU guys and Nigerian gangsters alike. It’s satisfyingly hideous.

And the most satisfying scene in the whole movie is the reward for Christopher’s 20-years-in the-making creative reconstruction of the command module’s propulsion system. When he finally gets back to the mother ship, and the engines fire up for the first time in human presence, and the force blows out every window in Johannesburg, the proverbial alien shit has hit the fan. God is rewarding faith and creativity with awe-inspiring power.

So it’s telling that the movie ends with a small act of creativity, as Wikus, now fully alien, fashions flowers for his wife out of aluminum cans and leaves them at her door. We just better hope that when Christopher comes back in three years that Wikus’ acts of creativity and selflessness have redeemed us and not just him.

Ok. I admit this piece is a bit obsessive, but that’s what I do. So don’t leave me hanging. Give me your takes if you’ve seen it.