I wonder if
Neill Blomkamp was at all nervous when he rolled Elysium out? I don’t say this
because he is (or may have been) incompetent as a director. He is not. We all
saw that as clear as day in District 9. In fact that is, in a nutshell, the problem.
District 9 was categorically awesome. Most of the planet agreed. Anything he
did after that was bound to be compared to it, especially since they have,
visually speaking at least, such similar premises. And I mean heck, the
similarities are not just visual, if you turned your head and squinted
slightly, you could argue that he had simply replaced the aliens of District 9
with “non-citizens” in this film. Now I’m not saying that Elysium is a bad
film, it definitely is not. But I do wish he had done it BEFORE District 9, not
after…
But what is
this Elysium of which we all speak? Well, in the late 21st century,
the world has been devastated by disease and poverty. So much so that the rich
and wealthy (the 1%, as it were) have moved to a space station in the sky
called Elysium. Here the elite live the high life (see what I did there ?) and
enjoy many benefits, not least that of an almost magical medical system which
allows them to stay young and beautiful almost indefinitely. I mean, it’s not
immortality, but it’s darn close. Darn close. But all that is just on Elysium
you see. On earth, people get ill, suffer and die the way they always have – we
can’t have the plebs getting their dirty paws on this technology, right? Anyway, Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-con and
orphan who lives on earth and can only dream
of ever going to Elysium one day (because, as you may have guessed, it
ain’t all that easy to become a citizen of Elysium). But one day, just as he is genuinely trying
to turn his life around a freak accident at work leaves him with a matter of
days to live… There is one thing that can save Max now : the medical attention
available on Elysium. With days left to live, Max is ready to take on any risk
to get to Elysium… But his efforts will start a chain reaction that will
threaten to shift the entire balance of the world he lives in…
Now, this
film gets a lot of things right, I have to say, because Blomkamp is, like I
said, a very talented and capable director. I especially love the fact that we
have a strong female villain in the shape of Jodie Foster. She plays Delacourt
(and I don’t know if it’s a dig in the ribs to old conventions or a genuine
re-birth of the phenomenon but our elitist villains are mostly French or
French-speaking) the Defense secretary who has her eyes firmly glued to the
president’s seat. In the proceedings Delacourt has what we generally term “male
characteristics” – she is ambitious, decisive and although she is up to her
neck in political scheming (but that’s more because she is a politician and
less because she is a woman if you see what I mean) she does not so much as bat
an eyelid as she orders two shuttles full of innocent civilians (innocent
civilians who are trying to sneak over the border into Elysium… Oh wait does
that remind you of something?) to be shot and annihilated. So brownie points
for reversing gender roles.
But now
onto the social commentary. Because this is mainly what Blomkamp is “all
about”. But the film would have fared so
much better if Blomkamp had actually done something artistic to put it across
as opposed to make something that very strongly resembles his own rather
brilliant previous film and a typical Hollywood action / sci-fi film and tack on some social
commentary. Ok, I’m being a bit harsh here but seriously… There is virtually
nothing original about the film at all… It even has a surrogate family
unit: Max, his love interest and her
daughter. I mean ok, fair dues, the family unit does NOT come together at the
end and the villain is the victim of her own political scheming and not our
hero but still… Yes there are some very good original notes in there but at the
end of the day I saw this as Blomkamp taking a huge step back. And given the
success of District 9, I don’t understand why… I mean never mind how much the
“world” in Elysium resembles the shanty towns in District 9. Never mind the
fact that they repeated the marketing tactics they used for District 9 too…
(You must have seen the “no aliens” stickers when district 9 came out right?
Did you catch the spoof ads for vacancies in Elysium? I saw a few on the tube
myself ) Do you know what it felt like to me? Blomkamp reckoned we “didn’t get”
his message the first time. So he “dumbed it down” and re-stated it. And, much
like watery soup, it still tasted ok but for those of us who were a fan of the
real thing we kinda wanted a decent meal. And we were kinda looking forward to
tasting something new. I mean the least Blomkamp could have done is to leave
the soup well alone and wait a bit if he couldn’t think of something new… Ok I
may have run a little too far with this analogy but you get the picture…
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