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One of the best scenes in Elysium, the second feature from writer-director Neill
Blomkamp (District
9), is also one of the film’s rare quiet moments. Three ships illegally
attempt to flee the wrecked, poverty-ravaged Earth of 2154 for the abundant
riches of Elysium, a paradisiacal, medically advanced space station that’s home
to the privileged few. First one ship, then another, falls to a missile, an
event Blomkamp shoots from a distance before cutting to a control panel
indicating a successful strike. Over a few seconds, the film conveys just how
little the deaths matter to the people with money. They draw minimal notice from
the rich, who not only distance themselves from the little people, but literally
look down upon them.
Elysium is otherwise much louder and never so subtle, using its 22nd-century
setting to comment on the inequities that currently divide the 1 percent from
the 99 percent, citizens from non-citizens, and those with health insurance from
those required to pay their own way. One of the film’s smarter touches is how
un-futuristic its futurism feels. Los Angeles lies in rubble, but it’s the
rubble of sustained neglect, reminiscent of the creeping disrepair of
21st-century Detroit and other spots in seemingly irreversible decline. Up
above, the resources of tomorrow’s privileged have been directed toward living
the lifestyles of today’s privileged: an endless poolside idyll catered by
robots and kept going by machines capable of curing virtually any physical
damage. Below, the poor suffer and die. Above, no one notices.
Blomkamp turns Elysium into a blunt weapon, but blunt weapons aren’t always
effective, and two feature films into his career, he has yet to establish a
second trick. Where 2009’s
District 9
drew on the recent history of his native South Africa for inspiration, here,
Blomkamp widens the allegorical net while telling a similar story of one man
reluctantly drawn into an attempt to overthrow an unfair system, a journey that
unfolds over a series of increasingly bone-rattling action scenes. Matt Damon
steps into the protagonist role as Max DeCosta, a child of the 22nd-century
slums who, in a series of flashbacks, is seen dreaming of moving to Elysium and
taking along his young love Frey (played as an adult by Alice Braga). Paradise
hangs over their heads, just out of reach.
As an adult, Max mostly dreams of making it through the day. An ex-con covered
in tattoos and trying to distance himself from a past as a car thief, he plugs
away at an assembly line making robots for the police and other clients, droids
of the same sort that, in one early scene, harass him on his way to work. (See
above about subtlety not being the film’s greatest strength.) But forces work to
shake him out of his routine. While being treated for injuries inflicted by
police robots, Max reconnects with Frey, now a nurse trying to care for her
ailing child. Then he’s injured again, this time on the job, when he’s exposed
to toxic amounts of radiation and given five days to live.
With nothing to lose, he joins his friend Julio (Diego Luna) in a scheme to
steal the memories, and confidential information, of Max’s boss Carlyle (a
sneering, perfect William Fichtner). What they don’t realize: Carlyle has plans
of his own, having fallen into cahoots with Elysium’s Secretary Of Defense
(Jodie Foster), who’s plotting a coup. To pull it off, she leans on a band of
Earth-based mercenaries led by Kruger (District
9 star Sharlto Copley), a man with no real beliefs who takes barbaric
pleasure in inflicting pain.
It’s a tangled plot wrapped around a simple story that pits the haves against
the have-nots. In fact, Blomkamp’s main source of inspiration seems to be the
oldest haves-vs.-have-nots
science-fiction film there is, Metropolis. There’s nothing so inspired here,
which isn’t saying that much, because few films come close to matching
Metropolis for inspiration. Then again, few seem as content to borrow its
naiveté, either. For all its particular references to contemporary issues,
Blomkamp’s film operates entirely in generalities. Viewers get to know only a
few Elysium residents over the course of the film, and even less about what
drives them, beyond greed and inertia. Foster, in a surprisingly nuance-free
performance, delivers Darth Vader-like pronouncements with an accent of no
determinate origin. Most of her fellow citizens don’t speak at all. Are they all
bad? Has privilege made them ignorant? It isn’t a minor question, since the film
suggests they could end the suffering on Earth with little more than the flip of
a switch.
Yet for all its simple politics, clanging dialogue, and underwritten roles—only
Damon’s natural, and deepening, ability to suggest unspoken disappointment gives
his character dimension—Elysium works, though never as well as it should.
Blomkamp has lost none of his ability, on display throughout
District 9, to
create visceral action scenes that feature the tech of tomorrow but have the
immediacy of powder burns or a scraped knuckle. In one fight sequence, with no
weapon at hand, Max resorts to pulling the head off a robotic opponent, and the
film makes every grunt and crackling wire feel like part of a life-or-death
struggle. (The robot’s head isn’t the only thing to suffer grievous injury,
either.) The film also keeps its world vivid, from Max’s hovel to the sterile
interiors of Elysium. While Blomkamp’s creation never reflects our world as
effectively as it wants to, it still feels like a real place, one where the
promise of a better life hangs tauntingly in the sky, inspiring the sort of
dreams that could lead a child, grown bitter with time, to try dragging it down
to Earth. Still, for all its flaws, "Elysium" is an often-absorbing and largely
entertaining film from a young director with a great future. That makes it worth
seeing -- if not a complete success. |
