Film Review: Elysium
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It’s tough when you walk out of a film and aren’t sure whether you enjoyed it or not, but this was the situation I found myself in upon leaving my screening of Elysium. The film, Neil Blomkamp’s first after the superb District 9, isn’t a supremely ambitious film and yet it carries on as if it is, mollywhopping you over the head with big messages and set pieces. Whether that’s for better or for worse, is hard to tell and part of the reason why although this film will entertain you, it fails to really rise to anything more.
Set in a universe where the poor live in squalid conditions on earth and the rich have fled to Elysium, the movie tells the story of a man named Max (Matt Damon) who after a work accident that give him five days to live, decides that he must turn back to his life of crime in order to buy a one way ticket to Elysium. The journey proves far more arduous due to Delacourt (Jodie Foster), the defense secretary of Elysium and her crazed prime mercenary Kruger (Sharlto Copley), who become locked in a power struggle with Max once he manages to steal some important information.
Talking about the script in plain terms is going to prove rather boring, considering that this film is much more about proving it’s messages and politics than trying to serve the story. I will say that in terms of structure, the film is solid, escalating from “simple” times to it’s big climax. What the film lacks in innovative storytelling it manages to make up for in obvious metaphors. Elysium pounds you with nods towards the healthcare debate, class issues, and immigration. However, the film fails to provide any context or motivations to these issues. Why would the rich hog all of the MedBays that can magically heal people, but still expect everyone on earth to go to a regular hospital? Did all of the illegal immigrants have to be Hispanic? Also for a movie so about class issues, they surely don’t give you a good idea of where exactly the class divide between rich and poor is. This and other elements feel less like organic plot points thant manufactured elements to tell the tale. It felt like the whack a mole of thematic storytelling, every time you recognize one “issue” another one pops up shouting “this is what the movie is about!”
Which is a shame because I feel like they overshadowed the more interesting subject matter of the importance/drive for power. It’s dumb to judge a movie based on what I might have wanted to happen but the message re health care were far less interesting than the power struggle the characters go through. Foster and Copley’s characters become more intruiging as the film goes on with regards to their desire for power and dominance that it’s strange this wasn’t given more time to grow. We never really get the why for how they acted and it could have made the movie better.
It’s for this reason that the acting doesn’t really pop like it could have. Matt Damon acquits himself well to the role of Max, a kind of superhero everyman who you root for. Though he manages to sell the action and has one really great scene post radiation poisoning, there isn’t much in the way of acting for him to do. Foster is basically wasted as Delacourt, with the Euroamerican accent being more memorable than her character arc. Sharlto Copley is the person everyone will be talking about, and while he does manage to give a crazy out there performance, I found the character more grating than enjoyable. Shcokingly, the best performance might be Alice Braga as Frey, channeling her experience from I Am Legend into something more visceral and urgent.
As far as the technicals go, everything is pretty much top notch, although I could go a while before hearing those Inception style BRAAAAAAAMs in scores again. The camera work in this film, while assured, does struggle to find an identity, as you can see up to three different types of cinematography in one fight sequence. Blomkamp definitely has an eye for scifi and spectacle, managing to really make you feel as though each setting 2154 Los Angeles and Elysium are characters themselves. He also seems to have gained a new confidence in directing action, with each scene feeling visceral and brutal, as well as spectacularly choreographed. Unfortunately, this confidence borders on arrogance as the movie goes on, ramping up each fight to feel like a duel to the death but without much explanation. Just how is Damon, who is dying from radiation poisoning able to compete with Copley, who just got fully healed in a medbay? Other than providing an opportunity to have a longer fight (made even longer by flashbacks intercut throughout the end of the film).
In the end, I’m not really sure I can enthusiastically recomend you see Elysium. The film has a lot going for it on the surface but never manages to really lift off and becoming anything more.
Grade: **1/2/**** (C)
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