Elysium

Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar crossed with Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall. Elysium has a rawer exposition than many artsy social dramas. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, out of the fire and into the shit. Work hard, die in pain. In a setting as equally shabby as that in District 9. Poverty, filth, disorder (the repressive regime makes itself known only when someone penetrates the world of the privileged). But you hope that the melodramatic flashbacks won’t dictate the tone of the narrative and that the film won’t deteriorate into an equally irritating spiritual handbook as Cloud Atlas. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen. Elysium puts up a brave fight against its nicer self – which I would like to believe was imposed by the studio – until the end; only then does the ultimate idealistic softening come. The romantic storyline unfortunately fails due to the brief time that the partners spend together and the intention was probably to make the class struggle a stronger motivation than love. The main objective and uncompromising deadlines are established with B-movie directness: the protagonist wants something and he must do this and that within X number of days at the latest in order to get it. A bonus for the Marxists is that Max’s mission is indirectly motivated by the unfair healthcare system, excessive punishments for illegal migrants and the inequality of citizens who obviously no longer care about race or nationality, but only about social class (in addition to that, an important role in the story is played by the leaking of the powerful elite’s sensitive data to the public, which can only be seen as an allusion to the Wikileaks and Snowden affairs). Given the insidious adoration of capitalism in most Hollywood blockbusters, I consider the indignation expressed by some American critics’ over the naïve propaganda of Elysium, in which the good people are truly good, the bad are seriously bad and any more ambivalence is taboo, to be shortsighted at the very least. Regardless of its ideological essence and the guilelessness with which it presents that essence, Elysium is primarily a brutal, high-octane cyberpunk dystopia with an almost horror-like atmosphere (see, for example, most of the scenes with the monstrous Copley), unpredictable development (the characters act erratically, occasionally something just simply goes wrong and at one point the star system is nicely mocked) and, unfortunately, extremely chaotic action scenes. With the exception of the extreme-slow-motion shots, which are cool thanks to the fact that Blomkamp doesn’t squander them, but I found it very difficult to tell who delivered blows to whom because of the overabundance of cuts. The variability of the direction that the narrative takes makes Elysium one the most video-game-like films of recent years alongside Battle Los Angeles and Dredd. The ending is determined, the course is marked and the specific form of the action depends on the player (who in this case is half man and half machine) and his abilities, and it thus doesn’t necessarily have to be as neatly planned out as in the case of more conventional action. Elysium surely could have provided more material for study (whether that would involve ideology or narratology), but it’s definitely still good as summer entertainment. 75% (09/08/2013) (less) (more)

One of my 10 most anticipated films of the year turned out to be meh. Neill Blomkamp still is an interesting talent as director, you can feel his almost fanlike zeal for smart science fiction, but like District 9, this movie stumbles with the script, though here it’s unfortunately worse. Elysium mixes a lot of things that are great with things that are far from great, and the result is inconsistent. First of all, I didn’t like: 1) The dense, black and white left-wing discourse. For most of the time, it isn’t so loud and I would have been fine with it, but the film lost me with the naive happy ending presented with a very serious face. Anyone with half a brain, or anyone capable of deducing the consequences of those left-wing ideas would realise that this can’t work. A couple of hospital ships (even if there were a lot more than shown, say, 1000) equipped with Med-Bays will peacefully go from slum to slum to treat an overpopulated planet, and people will stand in line and wait patiently? Yeah, right. And even if we assumed that “the resources are there”, i.e. that there are enough hospital ships, the film would deserve and even lower rating due to its hyperbole of putting all the rich people in the role of assholes who oppress the poor on Earth just for the fun of it… that would be extremely manipulative by Blomkamp, and I wouldn’t be willing to accept it. 2) The holes in the script, the half-assedness and the reliance on coincidences. All the activities of the Spider gang are so weird. Where do they get the codes or the ships? Why doesn’t the defence of Elysium do anything about it and waits to shoot at them one by one when they’re approaching? Why doesn’t Elysium have a modern defence system and instead uses some deranged agent to shoot down the ships manually (!!!) from Earth’s surface??? A criminal with his notebook is able to overwrite the entire system with the right codes? After one second of looking at a mass of code, the criminal is able to figure out that he’s holding a treasure in his hand and what that treasure can do? Earth is full of poverty, disease and destroyed buildings, but from the air it appears that lights work everywhere (=electricity)? The Med-Bays can’t cure a neck injury but they can cure half a head blown by a grenade? Or he didn’t die after being shot in the head? Really?! 3) Pathos, pathos, stupid pathos. I wouldn’t mind the left-wing stuff if it wasn’t adorned with slow-motion sunny scenes from the hero’s childhood. And the wise fairy-tale about a hippopotamus and a meerkat told by a cute little girl dying of leukaemia? God, why?! :-D____ And what I did like. 1) Magnificent sci-fi set design. The amazing design of Elysium, while on earth everything looks very realistic, worn-out, dirty. The world where the story takes place is brilliantly put together. 2) Sharlto Copley’s Agent Krueger, a brilliantly portrayed lunatic. 3) Certain moments in the script. Spoiler alert! For instance, the part when Krueger decides to take control of Elysium. I believe that the film would be much better if it focused only on Delacourt’s attempt at a coup d’etat, followed by Krueger’s military putsch and treason. They should have sod from the beginning that fairy-tale of the poor bastard that saves everyone. (30/08/2013) (less) (more)