By ANDY GILCHRIST
When was the last time you saw a movie with a strong message in it? I’m not talking about some melodramatic “love conquers all” B.S. every rom-com shoves down your throat. I’m talking about a
movie with a message that makes you see the world a bit differently afterwards. This past August’s Elysium is such a film. It brings the issues of class inequality, immigration, and health care to the forefront and makes you pay attention. Unfortunately, the message is presented in an overly simplified way, with the heroes being angels and the people of Elysium being devils. This black and white view of the world does not hold up when considering the huge, complex issues being dissected.
The year is 2154. Several decades earlier, as the world began suffering from global warming and overpopulation, the wealthy built a space station called Elysium, filled with luxurious gated homes where life was peaceful and everyone was happy. It is a place where there is no war, sickness, or any problems at all. But if you’re not rich or if you don’t have the necessary connections, you’re out of luck.
This left the poor and the middle class to rot, literally, on Earth. Decades later, the streets are filled with garbage and buildings are falling down, none having been built or even renovated in years. People are left to fend for themselves and to live in overcrowded, run-down houses.
Enter Max Da Costa (Matt Damon), a former car thief living in a dying Los Angeles and works at a plant that builds robots. When he’s doused in highly-toxic levels of radiation, he’s given five days to live and a bottle of pills to numb the pain until then. But Max refuses to die; there’s one place where he can be cured and it’s the one place he’s dreamed of going his entire life: Elysium. Using connections from his criminal past, he’s promised a trip to the satellite onboard a stolen space shuttle if he agrees to have a metal exo-skeleton drilled onto his body to help with a heist. Over the next few days, Max comes face to face with Frey Santiago (Alice Braga), a woman Max knew when they were children, plus other criminals and sadistic undercover Elysium agents on Earth, who all have their own reasons for going there.
Elysium is filmmaker Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to his incredible debut film, 2009’s District 9. His sophomore effort continues his
track record of strong performances, led by Damon as the everyman Max, who rises from his death sentence to become a Christ figure and save the world. Sharlto Copley, star of District 9, also brings his A-game as Kruger, an undercover Elysium agent based in Los Angeles. The character is a war criminal who committed the worst atrocities imaginable, and Copley terrifies audiences into believing it. And finally, Jodie Foster plays Elysium Secretary of State Jessica Delacourt. Though her accent does seem to change a bit in many scenes, she brings an authoritative performance as a woman secretly plotting to overthrow the President and take over the station.
For his second outing, Blomkamp is once again standing on a soap box, albeit a bigger one bought with all that District 9 money. His debut almost perfectly blended science fiction/action elements with important social issues and created a very entertaining film that also made the viewer think. Here, though he’s using the future to tell his story, he is highlighting issues that apply to the modern world. A scene early in the film shows three shuttles, all filled with the sick and poor, who are making a break for Elysium, where the only medicine and medical machines are located. Upon seeing them, Jessica Delacourt orders them shot down, regardless of their purpose. With this early scene, Blomkamp is simultaneously bringing up issues of health care, that only the rich can afford it, and immigration, that anyone trying to cross a border will absolutely be turned away. In addition, the entire premise of a space station paradise that only the rich can live on immediately makes the viewer think about issues between classes, and in the age of Occupy Wall Street and the 1% vs. the 99%, this issue could not be any more important.
However, the film presents these issues in an overly simple way. Every hero is purely good, while every villain is pure evil. Max used to be a car thief, but throughout the events of the film, he is only ever shown fighting for himself, his friends, or everyone on Earth against the evil Elysium machine. Likewise, Max’s old friend Frey is now a doctor, working ungodly hours to help thousands of L.A.’s sick, while her own daughter suffers from leukemia. On the other side, the villains have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Kruger is portrayed as a violent psychopath who will do anything, from threatening a child to hitting a woman, to complete a mission. Delacourt, meanwhile, is shown to be a cold, calculating woman who prefers to kill people from Earth trying to break into Elysium rather than just turn them away, and even plots to take the station over by any means necessary. For a film to bring up issues that are as complex as they are timely, the film falters by presenting them as simple right and wrong answers. It shows the world in black and white, when it’s really made up of multiples shades of grey.
The best science fiction doesn’t speculate about the future. Instead, it takes the important issues of today and presents them in a way that may be easier to understand. Elysium is a film that does just that, calling to mind the important social issues of immigration, health care, and class inequality. It’s a film like this that inspires people to go out and do something about these issues and, hopefully, change the world for the better.
