Written and Directed by Neill Blomkamp
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
"This isn't science fiction. This is today. This is now."
-Neill Blomkamp
And so it is...or more truthfully, it is what I have been wondering what will ultimately be.
Writer/Director Neill Blomkamp's "Elysium," his engrossing and brutally pummeling follow-up to his outstanding "District 9" (2009), firmly establishes him as a filmmaking force to be seriously reckoned with. As so many big budget films being released today that have not an idea in their heads and try to get by with special effects that aren't the least bit special, sloppy, hyperactive cinematography and editing and over-active sound designs, Blomkamp is a most welcome presence as he firmly understands not only how to utilize special effects and cutting edge filmmaking techniques, but also how to make them resonate to terrifically disturbing fashion by ensuring the story, themes, characters and performances are front and center and "Elysium" is no exception. Where "District 9" posed as an allegory to examine apartheid, "Elysium" openly takes on the subject of immigration and our increasing divide between the 99% and 1%, a divide which I fear is bound to ignite some deadly consequences...that is if the bulk of the 99% finally refuses to remain complacent. Now dear readers, do not think that I am one to utilize this film review haven as a call for real world violence. Absolutely not! But that said, the rage that boils and explodes within "Elysium" is highly palpable, mirroring my own as I look at the world we all co-exist within and wonder just exactly how and when the tables will turn.
Set in the year 2154, "Elysium" invites us into a future Earth vision that suggests just what our planet might look like just before it is solely inhabited by Wall-E. It is a world where Earth's resources have been depleted, the population has been entirely overrun and everyone exists in a filth ridden pestilence and extreme poverty. The wealthiest citizens have all evacuated the planet to a heavenly space station called Elysium, a paradise on which Secretary Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster) presides with a cruelly iron hand, determined to ensure that luxurious lifestyle is preserved only for the highly affluent citizens at all costs. This tactic includes attacking and destroying any space shuttles with illegal immigrants approaching in order to live a better life for themselves and in many cases, utilize the advanced technology of Med Pods, which are able to cure all illnesses.
Back on Earth, specifically in Los Angeles, we meet Max Da Costa (Matt Damon), a legendary thief and now ex-con who works on a factory line building androids and who houses large dreams on one day finally being able to purchase a ticket to Elysium. When Max is exposed to lethal radiation while upon the job and is told that he will die within five days, he strikes a deal with a notorious smuggler named Spider (an excellent Wagner Moura) to steal corporate information from which Spider can profit and in exchange, Spider will help Max infiltrate Elysium in order to use a Med Pod to save his own life. Inorder to accomplish this feat, a weakened and dying Max is scientifically merged with an exo-skeleton and bio-medical implants that will help him increase his strength and endurance.
Of course, this is all easier said than done as Max is doggedly pursued by Delacourt's hired mercenary and veritable psychopath Agent Krueger (a frighteningly unhinged Sharlto Copley) and his squadron. As Max attempts to blast his way to Elysium, he soon discovers that his journey contains much more purpose and meaning than just saving his own life as the fate of the lives on Earth rests in his hands and deep within his mind, the place where the stolen corporate information resides.
"Neill Blomkamp's "Elysium" is an angry, passionate, two-fisted science-fiction action adventure that roars from start to finish via its urgent subject matter and intensely felt fever dream pacing and execution. Very much like "District 9" and so much unlike most movies that are released these days, Blomkamp ensures that our very humanity is truly at stake within the confines of this story, and therefore making our existence something to claw and fight for as if our last breath is imminent. This wrenching quality gives all of the action sequences a purposeful emotional weight that makes them operate on a richer, deeper level than mere escapism yet Blomkamp never forgets how to get an audience to be visually blown away. In short, you will give more than a damn over what is happening and to whom while your eyes are popping at the sights and spectacle. You are fully engaged with the entirety of "Elysium" and not bludgeoned.
Also as with "District 9," the special effects of "Elysium" are truly special as everything feels to be so photo-realistic and seamlessly combined with the real world surroundings. The film has a lived in, gritty quality that envelops the senses so strongly that Blomkamp's vision even suggests the potential rank scents on Earth (and the sound effects of buzzing flies certain helped in this matter). I should warn those of you with sensitive stomachs that the level of graphic violence in "Elysium" is quite high. But for me, I never felt that the gore was gratuitous and actually, I found that it really helped the film a bit as the human cost within the story was paramount (especially in regards to who is eligible to receive health care and who is not) and we weren't witnessing another cavalcade of anonymous CGI people being blown away.
But all of this would be for naught if you didn't have the right actors to pull this off. Matt Damon again shows why he is one of the finest actors of his generation through his 100% commitment to the role of Max which is copiously filled with existential anguish and a ferocious physical urgency. Sharlto Copley's vicious unpredictability is precisely what makes him such an an engaging, unnerving and formidable screen presence to watch and he makes his mercenary one of 2013's most frightening villains by far.
And yet, as terrific as "Elysium" is, it did not quite match the heights set by "District 9." First of all, there was Jodie Foster who has returned to her "Ice Queen" territory as we have already seen (and much better) in Spike Lee's excellent "Inside Man" (2006). With the ravenous, rapacious performance of Sharlto Copley in place, that excellence offset what could otherwise have been an even more terrifying villain-the politician with no soul, empathy or concern whatsoever for anything other than their own sense of self-preservation and feral desire for unrelenting power and control. Basically, many of the members that make up our United States Congress! (Ba dum bump!) Jodie Foster's performance as Jessica Delacourt, a political figure that only the likes of Dick Cheney and John McCain would envy, amounts to nothing more than clenched teeth and a bizarre, wandering foreign accent that sometimes sounds French, sometimes sounds British, or sometimes sounds South African. It is a sad miscalculation that undermines her imposing presence and it is the film's weakest performance by a mile.
Even larger, is the fact that "Elysium" is yet another science fiction film that feels to be largely made up of spare parts from other science fiction films whereas "District 9" reminded me of nothing that I had previously seen. Blomkamp gives his nods to no less than George Miller's "Mad Max" series (1979/1982/1985), John Carpenter's "Escape From New York" (1981), James Cameron's "The Terminator" (1984), Paul Verhoven's "Robocop" (1987), and The Wachowski's "The Matrix" series (1999/2003). But unlike Joseph Kosinski's downright awful "Oblivion" from earlier this year, "Elysium" never devolves into outright plagiarism.
Blomkamp's personal stamp arrives with how he uses the landscape of science fiction to explore the social/economic/political landscape that is in front of us right now. "Elysium" is filled with Blomkamp's thought provoking anger which rallies against a broken political system, and most loudly at a health care system that is becoming more exclusive based upon ethnicity and one's economic class. One major plot point in the film involves a small Hispanic girl from Earth dying from Leukemia who desperately needs one of Elysium's Med Pods but is refused (and furthermore hunted down) solely because she is not a citizen. Now, this tactic may seem to be more than a bit purple to some of you but as we look out into the real world in which we all live, just look at the politicians in office right now who are denying the very same access to health care for the poor, especially small children. That level of moral outrage sits at the heart of "Elysium" and that is what makes the film overall so sobering and tumultuous to experience. And what else lies at the heart of "Elysium" is the sense of sacrifice in favor of the greater good of humanity itself.
For all of the fury and carnage, Neill Blomkamp has delivered another turbulent odyssey that explores and questions who we are and whom we would like to be at this specific point in time. How can we allow to call ourselves human if atrocities like these and individualistic displays of self-preservation are allowed to continue their stranglehold on the wheel of morality. Blomkamp knows that all it takes is one to light the spark to enact change. But what will that change look like?
By looking at our past and devising a grim future, "Elysium" gives us more than enough food for thought while it also blasts us around the movie theater and as far as I am concerned, that is a triumph.
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