District 9 and the death of hope
Here be SPOILERS.
District 9 is by far the most awesome film I have seen this year.
It's not the most slick film, but it is complex, and fills its world with fully realised people[1] and aliens, and helps us enter that world mostly seamlessly. And then it pushes us as far as we can go.
And then, sadly, it stops pushing. It reminds me why I read books for primary emotional experience through media.
I'll talk more about that, but later.
District 9 is good science fiction.
It fleshes out its world for us in ways we can access: instead of painting J. Random Big City U.S.A, it chooses Johannesburg. It's a location that has a lot of resonance, but it's one that many of us aren't familiar with. The documentary-style opening helps open us up to seeing that this is a real world, close to ours, with real people and real fears. The setting is just unfamiliar enough to most of us to let us believe it.
The person who asks "why don't they just go home?" is speaking about every refugee. The government worker who believes that he's doing the right thing, but also sees the refugee aliens as a problem to be 'managed'; as a day job, not as the fabric of his life is a standard beaurocrat. The head-shaking and tsk-tsking are things we've seen real people do, and they are believable.
The film starts immediately -- there are no credits to distract from the idea that we are just dropped into this expose and documentary -- and we go along with it.
The refugees are causing problems for the government. And they've tried control, so now they're trying force -- evicting 1.5 million 'Prawns' from their ghetto to a concentration camp 200 miles away. They want the issue out of sight, and out of mind.
We follow the workers as they go to begin the eviction process: serving notice to the alien residents that they have 24 hours to get out.
The moment that the viewpoint switches from documentary to drama isn't as subtle as it could be, but it's still well-done. We flick between cameras that are obviously in helicopters, in surveillance cameras, within vehicles travelling through District 9, and then a view of the aliens that we know can't have come from any camera being held by a human.
I think if we had seen that humans live alongside the Prawns first, it would have been less obvious, and I could have sustained my belief longer. As it was, the narrative thus far had presented the aliens as causing violence, and being walled in, and I didn't expect humans to live among them, and the camera shift threw me out of the movie for a moment.
That shift to drama, however, takes us into the movie proper, and from there, it's unrelenting. The government workers so desperately want to get the job over with: they take any mark on the paper as a signature that the alien accepts that they are being evicted. Not quite lying to them, but certainly not giving them enough information, using their lack of understanding, taking advantage.
And as the movie goes in, it's clear that it's not just advantage being taken. We're shown to be equivalent to Nazis in this world. Humans, frankly, suck. We see characters that value Prawn life so much less than human that we the audience are invited to reflect and see where we drew the line at unacceptable behaviour. Was it evicting unfairly? Was it the initial barricading? Was it blaming the Prawns for the violence and desperation they are experiencing? Was it the subjugation and segregation that's imposed from the start, after initial hopeful relief and aid? Or was it not until you see the callous lack of regard for Prawn life? The exterminating and experimenting on live subjects? The lust for power regardless of cost?
We see evil on several scales: the petty evil of beaurocracy; the opportunistic evil of organised crime; the calculating evil of capitalism; the evil of complacency and apathy; the evil of selfishness. Each of these affects the refugees, crushes them and their hopes -- worse, blatently ignores them.
It's hard to watch, and it should be.
Key to the film, too, is how human life is treated and reflected, compared to Prawn life.
I loved that every human death results in a splatter of blood on the camera lens. Oh, I wish it had been in 3D so that the audience would literally flinch as a human death is brought home viscerally.
It's brutal -- it's intended to be -- and it matters when humans suffer.
The Nigerians (note the othering, there, from the overwhelmingly white narrators) live among the Prawns and sell them food, while taking their weapons and dignity. They're profiteering, making money out of misery. It's telling that we never see the world through the Nigerians' eyes, but we're invited to see them as universally bad. At the same time, they are working in exactly the way that every other group in the film is: trying to gain a measure of power for themselves. Trying to get purchase in a world that is granting them very little to hold on to.
The genius, then, is in how the film grants us perspective (both literal and figurative) on the different groups and their interactions. It's deliberately done, and I want to watch the film again, and note the moments when the viewpoint slides a little. Those moments when the cameras flick to another perspective. To put you, literally and figuratively, in a different place to see the action.
HOW we view the world, HOW it is presented to us -- as drama, as documentary, as in-group, as out-group, as collaborator, as outsider, as judge, as sympathiser -- makes all the difference.
The alien technology is well-explained, plausible, and shows their grubbing desperation and hope for the future and willingness to tackle long-term projects. That they have so much weaponry that could annihilate us and choose not to just makes everything so much more tragic. How blind and stupid are we humans, anyway? Very much, the film tells us, and we can't deny it.
That so much of the film is done so well makes the ending so much harder to bear.
It's hard to explain if you haven't seen the film, but everything changes when Wikus turns back for Christopher. (And how much do I love that the human names sound strange and unfamiliar to many of us, because of the South African context, while the Prawns are given plain English-sounding names by the government? A LOT.)
I can explain it as being the moment when Wikus' eye changes from Human to Prawn: he sees the world, quite literally, in a different way, and his behaviour and motives change. But that feels and sounds like fanservice.
I don't believe Wikus would turn around. His motives have been venal, petty and selfish throughout. The alien child (a clever 'as you know bob' device, among other things) seems to have things under control, and is the more important character for Wikus to chase and use at that point to accomplish his own goals.
And the gun-totin' baddie chasing him is just such old-style Hollywood heavyhandedness, while at the same time there's a big gun battle with shooting that somehow takes down the heavily armoured alien technology while mysteriously not killing the alien shielded only by an iron door-cum-shield. This stretches belief into snapping outrageously.
Perhaps that's part of the point (see, fanservice again!). That we recognise the hollywoodisation, and wonder what _really_ happened; wonder how the non-movie 'based on real events' version would actually play out.
It's not enough. It gets sentimental and smaltzy when it should be unrelenting and gritty. It's a movie that should crush hope utterly, not deliver us flowers on our doorstep that will never wilt (a hopelessly cliched device to instill hope and a belief in the power of love. Fuck that.).
I wanted more. And I know from the promise of the first three-quarters that it could have delivered. But it didn't.
Even so, it's a brilliant film.
[1] Until the last ten minutes, pretty much. The final 'baddie' was cardboard, when so many others hadn't been.
District 9 is by far the most awesome film I have seen this year.
It's not the most slick film, but it is complex, and fills its world with fully realised people[1] and aliens, and helps us enter that world mostly seamlessly. And then it pushes us as far as we can go.
And then, sadly, it stops pushing. It reminds me why I read books for primary emotional experience through media.
I'll talk more about that, but later.
District 9 is good science fiction.
It fleshes out its world for us in ways we can access: instead of painting J. Random Big City U.S.A, it chooses Johannesburg. It's a location that has a lot of resonance, but it's one that many of us aren't familiar with. The documentary-style opening helps open us up to seeing that this is a real world, close to ours, with real people and real fears. The setting is just unfamiliar enough to most of us to let us believe it.
The person who asks "why don't they just go home?" is speaking about every refugee. The government worker who believes that he's doing the right thing, but also sees the refugee aliens as a problem to be 'managed'; as a day job, not as the fabric of his life is a standard beaurocrat. The head-shaking and tsk-tsking are things we've seen real people do, and they are believable.
The film starts immediately -- there are no credits to distract from the idea that we are just dropped into this expose and documentary -- and we go along with it.
The refugees are causing problems for the government. And they've tried control, so now they're trying force -- evicting 1.5 million 'Prawns' from their ghetto to a concentration camp 200 miles away. They want the issue out of sight, and out of mind.
We follow the workers as they go to begin the eviction process: serving notice to the alien residents that they have 24 hours to get out.
The moment that the viewpoint switches from documentary to drama isn't as subtle as it could be, but it's still well-done. We flick between cameras that are obviously in helicopters, in surveillance cameras, within vehicles travelling through District 9, and then a view of the aliens that we know can't have come from any camera being held by a human.
I think if we had seen that humans live alongside the Prawns first, it would have been less obvious, and I could have sustained my belief longer. As it was, the narrative thus far had presented the aliens as causing violence, and being walled in, and I didn't expect humans to live among them, and the camera shift threw me out of the movie for a moment.
That shift to drama, however, takes us into the movie proper, and from there, it's unrelenting. The government workers so desperately want to get the job over with: they take any mark on the paper as a signature that the alien accepts that they are being evicted. Not quite lying to them, but certainly not giving them enough information, using their lack of understanding, taking advantage.
And as the movie goes in, it's clear that it's not just advantage being taken. We're shown to be equivalent to Nazis in this world. Humans, frankly, suck. We see characters that value Prawn life so much less than human that we the audience are invited to reflect and see where we drew the line at unacceptable behaviour. Was it evicting unfairly? Was it the initial barricading? Was it blaming the Prawns for the violence and desperation they are experiencing? Was it the subjugation and segregation that's imposed from the start, after initial hopeful relief and aid? Or was it not until you see the callous lack of regard for Prawn life? The exterminating and experimenting on live subjects? The lust for power regardless of cost?
We see evil on several scales: the petty evil of beaurocracy; the opportunistic evil of organised crime; the calculating evil of capitalism; the evil of complacency and apathy; the evil of selfishness. Each of these affects the refugees, crushes them and their hopes -- worse, blatently ignores them.
It's hard to watch, and it should be.
Key to the film, too, is how human life is treated and reflected, compared to Prawn life.
I loved that every human death results in a splatter of blood on the camera lens. Oh, I wish it had been in 3D so that the audience would literally flinch as a human death is brought home viscerally.
It's brutal -- it's intended to be -- and it matters when humans suffer.
The Nigerians (note the othering, there, from the overwhelmingly white narrators) live among the Prawns and sell them food, while taking their weapons and dignity. They're profiteering, making money out of misery. It's telling that we never see the world through the Nigerians' eyes, but we're invited to see them as universally bad. At the same time, they are working in exactly the way that every other group in the film is: trying to gain a measure of power for themselves. Trying to get purchase in a world that is granting them very little to hold on to.
The genius, then, is in how the film grants us perspective (both literal and figurative) on the different groups and their interactions. It's deliberately done, and I want to watch the film again, and note the moments when the viewpoint slides a little. Those moments when the cameras flick to another perspective. To put you, literally and figuratively, in a different place to see the action.
HOW we view the world, HOW it is presented to us -- as drama, as documentary, as in-group, as out-group, as collaborator, as outsider, as judge, as sympathiser -- makes all the difference.
The alien technology is well-explained, plausible, and shows their grubbing desperation and hope for the future and willingness to tackle long-term projects. That they have so much weaponry that could annihilate us and choose not to just makes everything so much more tragic. How blind and stupid are we humans, anyway? Very much, the film tells us, and we can't deny it.
That so much of the film is done so well makes the ending so much harder to bear.
It's hard to explain if you haven't seen the film, but everything changes when Wikus turns back for Christopher. (And how much do I love that the human names sound strange and unfamiliar to many of us, because of the South African context, while the Prawns are given plain English-sounding names by the government? A LOT.)
I can explain it as being the moment when Wikus' eye changes from Human to Prawn: he sees the world, quite literally, in a different way, and his behaviour and motives change. But that feels and sounds like fanservice.
I don't believe Wikus would turn around. His motives have been venal, petty and selfish throughout. The alien child (a clever 'as you know bob' device, among other things) seems to have things under control, and is the more important character for Wikus to chase and use at that point to accomplish his own goals.
And the gun-totin' baddie chasing him is just such old-style Hollywood heavyhandedness, while at the same time there's a big gun battle with shooting that somehow takes down the heavily armoured alien technology while mysteriously not killing the alien shielded only by an iron door-cum-shield. This stretches belief into snapping outrageously.
Perhaps that's part of the point (see, fanservice again!). That we recognise the hollywoodisation, and wonder what _really_ happened; wonder how the non-movie 'based on real events' version would actually play out.
It's not enough. It gets sentimental and smaltzy when it should be unrelenting and gritty. It's a movie that should crush hope utterly, not deliver us flowers on our doorstep that will never wilt (a hopelessly cliched device to instill hope and a belief in the power of love. Fuck that.).
I wanted more. And I know from the promise of the first three-quarters that it could have delivered. But it didn't.
Even so, it's a brilliant film.
[1] Until the last ten minutes, pretty much. The final 'baddie' was cardboard, when so many others hadn't been.