We loved Blomkamp's first grungy opus, District Nine, and prayed hard for other auteurs to run with the direction it seemed to provide to a genre mired in pointless visual noodling and suicidal plagiarism. But when I saw the first trailer for Elysium I half-complained that it looked too familiar. That's not really a legitimate criticism, at least not one that I'd tolerate in regard to my own work, having come to the (stunningly obvious) conclusion that worthwhile oeuvres are constructed over time, are necessarily self-referential and expand upon themselves according to the value of their fundamentals. Reiteration can be a very good thing and Elysium's mining of District Nine's rich conceptual deposits proves to be its greatest strength.
Max (Damon) is a meaty parolee caught in the brutal mechanics of post-economic and environmental collapse. Humanity's one-percent overlords administer the ruined Earth with droids and a cruel but firm hand from the luxury of their titular orbiting colony; this much is briskly established. After a workplace mishap Max is driven back to the criminality he was attempting to escape in order to access the organic renewal available only to the privileged residents of Elysium. I won't dump any spoilers on your head at this stage.
Max (Damon) is a meaty parolee caught in the brutal mechanics of post-economic and environmental collapse. Humanity's one-percent overlords administer the ruined Earth with droids and a cruel but firm hand from the luxury of their titular orbiting colony; this much is briskly established. After a workplace mishap Max is driven back to the criminality he was attempting to escape in order to access the organic renewal available only to the privileged residents of Elysium. I won't dump any spoilers on your head at this stage.
Elysium is pretty explicitly political and who better to twist first-world nipples than someone straight outta Jo'burg and privy to all the inequities that have us collectively circling the drain in reality? Anyone writing today can tell you this is a brave choice, given audiences conditioned by fey-mongering nerdboys and their preference for head/sand escapism. It gets a lot of things right, actually, like utilizing the scope offered by our current industrial complexes, the future they are engineering scarcely in need of the embellishment envisioned here. District Nine's filthy, no-star aesthetic serves it well, imposing its values on a narrative so often hijacked by aspirational design; stacking a lo-fi backdrop with the same achtung utilitarian stylings and weaponry was a solid decision. The FX as a whole emerge from the slightly budget functionalism of D9 to earn that most elusive of perceptual designations- mundane acceptance. Nasty little in-jokes and homages abound but Blomkamp exhibits laudable restraint, thankfully only ever sticking the tip in in this respect and he handles the polyglot dialogue with the same unapologetic assurance, vaporising all notions of tokenism.
That's not to say nothing was sacrificed to the god of popularism. It's too pacy for one, dragging us through dirt and space like we've got a foot caught in the stirrup, engendering a haste that strips out too much development, compressing characters and backstory that deserved a more meaningful treatment. The grimy vision suffers definite moments of inelegant embellishment-failure (the fake blossom trees *ahem* hot-glue-gunned into the gantry fight scene- ehh ohh). The gease imposed on Damon's protagonist by his misfortune seemed far too cursory; we hardly felt a thing when we should have been counting off the minutes with him. And in conforming to the one percent's drearily manicured vision, the off-world sanctuary itself feels just as suffocating as toilet-Earth; this is slyly apposite and a throws a small bone to the kind of reviewer who would bitch if it wasn't the case. Lol. Far more disappointing was the wide streak of meh we detected in the denouement, its nobler sentiments wilted by unoriginality and expedient kinetic scrummage.
That's not to say nothing was sacrificed to the god of popularism. It's too pacy for one, dragging us through dirt and space like we've got a foot caught in the stirrup, engendering a haste that strips out too much development, compressing characters and backstory that deserved a more meaningful treatment. The grimy vision suffers definite moments of inelegant embellishment-failure (the fake blossom trees *ahem* hot-glue-gunned into the gantry fight scene- ehh ohh). The gease imposed on Damon's protagonist by his misfortune seemed far too cursory; we hardly felt a thing when we should have been counting off the minutes with him. And in conforming to the one percent's drearily manicured vision, the off-world sanctuary itself feels just as suffocating as toilet-Earth; this is slyly apposite and a throws a small bone to the kind of reviewer who would bitch if it wasn't the case. Lol. Far more disappointing was the wide streak of meh we detected in the denouement, its nobler sentiments wilted by unoriginality and expedient kinetic scrummage.
It does rejoice in a diverse and broadly competent cast with the exception of Jodie Foster who fails to transition from contemporary MOR heroine to futuristic villain and just seems like a bleached sore thumb, smooshing poorly-timed verbal affectation and passionless grit into something thin and rather dismal. To be fair, she didn't have much to work with, but you can't help thinking someone else could have made a much better fist of its bare bones. Tilda Swinton could have nailed it in her sleep. Copley struggles more convincingly with the shallow arc of his machine-stamped psycho but I love Sharlto, so I may be giving him a pass here. Damon is good-to-okay as the luckless protagonist but I've had a problem with his down-tuning ever since Jason Bourne started mumbling and averting his eyes in a tight spot. While we empathise with the brutish limitations of his antiheroism, there were so many missed opportunities- for humour, for pathos- that his role feels like it was cut down with a machete. Braga is good as Frey, his erstwhile love, despite being set squarely in imperilled-maiden-eye-roll territory; fix that shit, Neill, seriously. Perhaps most astounding of all is William Fitchner as exactly the same deliciously soulless corporate fuckknuckle he played to squeaky perfection in Michael Mann's Heat nearly twenty freaking years ago! (We've had Heat on high rotation for the past year or so, coincidentally). OMG, right?
Elysium deserves your full Friday night consideration. We expected a lot and it largely delivered, within the unenviable confines of its commercial parameters. Does it benefit from a distinct lack of competition? Hell yes, but so did Blade Runner. I like Blomkamp for his (relatively) inclusive verité, gratuitous explosive ordinance, thickly-accented monologues and for entertaining us with threads plucked from the very catastrophe we're facing for real. If there's nothing unreservedly inspirational about his vision, I'm not sure the fault lies with its author.
M O R E R E V I E W S H E R E
Elysium deserves your full Friday night consideration. We expected a lot and it largely delivered, within the unenviable confines of its commercial parameters. Does it benefit from a distinct lack of competition? Hell yes, but so did Blade Runner. I like Blomkamp for his (relatively) inclusive verité, gratuitous explosive ordinance, thickly-accented monologues and for entertaining us with threads plucked from the very catastrophe we're facing for real. If there's nothing unreservedly inspirational about his vision, I'm not sure the fault lies with its author.
M O R E R E V I E W S H E R E
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