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Matt Damon takes aim. He's wearing as well a mechanical suit that makes him look like a building under construction. |
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Matt Damon (Max Da Costa), Jodie Foster (Defence
Secretary Delacourt), Alice Braga (Frey Santiago), Sharlto Copley (Agent
Kruger), Diego Luna (Julio), Wagner Moura (Spider), William Fichtner (John
Carlyle)
In a dystopian future, the world has become polluted and
overpopulated. The rich and privileged live on Elysium, a massive orbital space
station with an Earth-like atmosphere where medical equipment can cure anything. The masses on Earth yearn to join Elysium, many resorting to black
market routes. Max da Costa (Matt Damon)
is an ex-thief who contracts a lethal radiation infection at work. With
little choice, he agrees to take part in a dangerous data heist (wearing a suit
that enhances his physical abilities) in return for a black market trip to
Elysium. But his heist crosses the plans of Elysium’s ambitious Defence
Secretary (Jodie Foster) and her ruthless black ops operative Kruger (Sharlto
Copley).
The design of this world, as per District 9 (to which this feels almost like a spiritual sequel), is
impressive and really captures the visual clash between third world poverty on
Earth and the paradise in the sky of Elysium. The sense of a society firmly
divided into the haves and have nots is (at first) very well sketched out.
There is the potential for a compelling us-against-them narrative ready to burst out, and Damon’s
character seems positioned as “our champion” to bring down the system.
This is actually a really neat concept for a movie. What
it’s crying out for, though, is more than the by-the-numbers execution it gets
here. I suspect there were struggles between Blomkamp’s interest in putting
social issues side-by-side with sci-fi action, and the demands of “the money”
to get more Damon Bourne-inspired chaos on the screen. Either way, after the
initial set-up the movie goes nowhere in particular. A lot of world
establishment is needed here (I’ve just struggled to explain it in one paragraph) and the film doesn’t get the balance right between setting this up and then getting into the story – it’s a good 45
minutes before the story starts and 40 minutes later the film is more or less
over. I’ll give it credit that the short runtime does mean it goes nowhere fast, but it’s still a pointless
destination.
Anyway, the problem that cuts to the core is you don’t
really care about anything. Copley brings charisma to his heavy role, but the
character is a formless one who engages in any act of villainy the film needs
him to do. Foster’s cold (English accented?) bureaucrat similarly never fully
comes to life, despite her best efforts. Braga is a thinly sketched bit of human interest. The film is crammed with decent actors
who were obviously attracted to some sort of idea behind the script – it’s just
a shame that whatever got them worked up about the material never made it to
the screen.
Damon’s character is key to this: he should be someone who
finds his feet as the champion of the oppressed, who makes decisions and
sacrifices that initially at first seem to be out the scope of his
understanding of the world. The script pushes him towards this but it never
feels real – we never get to know him (either before or after the
event that changes his life) and we never get a sense of him being driven by
anything beyond his original narrow aims until the film suddenly calls on him
to make a series of huge sacrifices. It just doesn’t feel true: the film
doesn’t take us on a journey with him, meaning the end lacks
satisfaction. I’ll also mention in passing that, among the poor,
downtrodden, entirely-Latino urban classes, the lead is the only white
character – and yet he too has a Latino name, which to me suggests a certain
level of white-washing for box office.
Instead this is a poorly sketched out bit of faux-thinking sci-fi, that sketches out
a dystopia that never really makes any sense (it seems easy to cure the
population of the world, but the inhabitants of Elysium never do – surely some
sort of reason other than apathy might have added a bit more believability to
this? Perhaps if more had been made of the need to depopulate the Earth?).
Instead it’s a crapsack world for the sake of it, and the characters move
through a series of events that happen but never engage us.
It’s sad, as this could have been quite a little B-movie
classic. Perhaps the best review of the film comes from Blomkamp himself: “I
feel like I fucked it up, I feel like ultimately the story is not the right
story. I still think the satirical idea of a ring, filled with rich people,
hovering above the impoverished Earth, is an awesome idea. I love it so much, I
almost want to go back and do it correctly. But I just think the script wasn’t…
I just didn’t make a good enough film is ultimately what it is. I feel like I
executed all of the stuff that could be executed, like costume and set design
and special effects very well. But, ultimately, it was all resting on a
somewhat not totally formed skeletal system, so the script just wasn’t there;
the story wasn’t fully there.”
Couldn’t put it better myself.
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