Elysium (2012)

The first part of Elysium actually made my heart pound: it's a riveting start that conjures up a quite alarming picture of life on earth ... and in space. Alarming, because it's also familiar. Los Angeles has become one enormous overpopulated shanty town. People are shuffled around in an authoritarian system of work, but they seem to be dependent on the art of making do, of taking advantage of the situation. Their lives are guarded by robots who carry out the no-nonsense bureaucratic routines. In a slightly Marcusean vein, the main character is employed in a factory where these robots are put together - his precious work (many are unemployed) contribute to his own oppression. Neill Blomkamp here treads on the path he demarcated in District 9: dystopian films with a clear political agenda. Elysium has the politics, it has the setting - but what is sure doesn't have is a good sense for storytelling. Bloomkamp opts for action hero extravaganza and the film's potential goes down the drain, being swallowed up in a gigantic maelstrom of bombastic music, predictable fight scenes and tacky lines. This is the second part of the film, in which Matt Damon, our hero, is on a mission to save himself, his girl, the girl's daughter and the rest of humanity living on earth. What's the answer? The space shuttle taking them all to the space station - Elysium - on which the wealthy & privileged minority reside and there the sick can be healed by laying down in glass box. Their minister of Defence (an icy Jodie Foster - it's rumored that the role was written for a man but she wanted the job anyway, she's great) prefence n:o 1 is to keep the people on earth away from this haven of ordered and pleasant life. The space station itself remains a caricature of sterile mansions and people who walk around in coctail parties speaking French. Elysium could've been a great film about polarization, precarious life and environmental drainage. The stage was set for a great powerful movie about what is already going to hell. Instead, the Elysium we got is a bombastic action flick that tries so hard to press all the right buttons. Bloomkamp's attempt at resolution might be the most preposterious in the history of cinema (revolution is pressing a button) but his vision nonetheless is a haunting one. I hope he will drop the action film pretension and make other kinds of movies.