*Premise spoilers.*
I remember being aware of this film when it came out, though I didn’t know much about it. I certainly didn’t know that it was Neill Blomkamp’s second feature film after District 9, but now having seen it, that makes a lot of sense. While I have some quibbles with it, I thought it was interesting on the whole.
In the year 2154, the Earth is an overpopulated wreck of a planet, filled with desperate people scrambling for scarce resources. The ultrawealthy have left altogether, enjoying pampered lives on the pristine space station known as Elysium, where all their needs are seen to. When workplace negligence leaves Max, a working-class parolee who’s trying to turn over a new leaf, in dire straits, he turns to desperate measures. Realizing that his only hope lies in the high-tech med bays on Elysium, Max is prepared to do whatever he must to secure himself a ticket.
I’ll start with the parts that bugged me. While the message of the film, which uses Elysium as an analogy to explore xenophobic immigration policies, is good, it’s laid on a bit thick at times. The rhetoric of the zealous Secretary of Homeland Security on Elysium veers on mustache-twirling as she orders “undocumented ships” from Earth to be shot down. On Earth, a doctor shrugs off a mother’s pleas for her terminally ill daughter to stay in the hospital. “This isn’t Elysium,” he says. “We can’t just heal her.” (The med bays, by the way, seem to be the only reason people from Earth are trying to get to Elysium. And they’re definitely miraculous—they can cure any illness and repair virtually any injury in moments. But, like, nobody wants to go there for easy access to food, water, clean air, and freedom from backbreaking labor in a sweltering police state overseen by intractable robots?)
Then there’s Max. Once he’s grievously injured on the job and desperate to get to Elysium, I understand what he’s about. He’s bound and determined to survive by any means necessary. If that means begging an underground ferryman for help and agreeing to take a dangerous job for him in exchange for a ticket, so be it. He even agrees to have an exosuit bolted and welded to his body to keep him up and moving as his condition slowly weakens him. But the part that comes before all that doesn’t quite make sense to me, because Max just doesn’t move through the world like someone who’s used to being oppressed. He’s snarky with the robots at a checkpoint and gets his arm broken as a result, and when his boss nonchalantly tells him to do something incredulously dangerous, he basically laughs it off. And look, I’m not saying Max couldn’t have a smart mouth when he shouldn’t, or try to stand up for himself against workplace abuses. But he should be aware of what kind of system he’s living in. He should be prepared for consequences if he makes a sarcastic remark to a militarized robot, and he should know that his boss isn’t joking about wanting Max to risk his life to get the factory line moving again. Instead, he acts like these things never could’ve occurred to him. That causes some disconnect between him and the rest of the world he inhabits.
On the whole, though, I do like the film. It’s grimy and brutal, with shades of both District 9 and Mad Max: Fury Road. I like the design on the futuristic tech, from the unnaturally smooth movements of the robots to the forged IDs people get branded onto their skin before they try to make a break for Elysium. The action is pretty cool (although the gore can be shocking at times,) and even if Max’s attitude doesn’t always make sense to me, I like the ultimate journey he goes on over the course of the movie.
Max is played by Matt Damon, with Alice Braga as his childhood friend Frey and Jodie Foster on Elysium as the villainous Secretary Delacourt. The film also features appearances from Sharlto Copley (who starred in District 9,) William Fichtner, and Wagner Moura (a.k.a. Pablo Escobar – retroactive Narcos reunion, even though he and Diego Luna were in different series in the franchise.)
Luna plays Julio, a guy in Max’s neighborhood. The two of them used to steal cars together, and Julio has been trying to entice him back with new jobs, but Max holds firm. But after he’s gravely injured at work, Max demands that Julio takes him to see Spider, the man who runs the operation to send undocumented ships to Elysium.
Although his role is small, Julio is kind of the heart of the movie for as long as he’s in it. Despite Max brushing off his car-theft-related overtures, Julio immediately rushes to help when he sees Max struggling to get home in serious condition. He springs into action, taking care of Max and trying to reassure him that he’ll be all right. When he learns Max’s prognosis and realizes the need to get to Elysium, he says, without hesitation, “I’ll give you everything I have, but it’s not enough for a ticket.”
I like that. It’s not a hugely demanding part, but I like that we see Julio as someone with a flexible attitude toward the law but a strong moral code. He’s loyal and caring, and he hasn’t had the fight knocked out of him by life on Earth yet. In a harsh world, I appreciate seeing a bit of goodness.
Recommend?
In General – I think so. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s interesting, and Blomkamp’s direction is tactile and cool.
Diego Luna – I might. Again, it’s a small role, and it doesn’t call on Luna to do too much, but I really enjoyed it. (Although that hair is a choice, lol.)
Warnings
Graphic violence, strong thematic elements, language, and drinking/smoking.
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