Elysium
Having read this article I felt a tingle in my hands pushing me to write a posting about “Elysium”. Honestly, I don’t get it. After watching “Source Code”, I thought it was amazingly stupid yet the whole world seemed to love it. “Elysium”, however, garnered rather bad reviews and some guy I kind of slept with many years ago vented on Facebook about how stupid he thought the film was. Considering that he loves the Austin Powers movies, this may not mean a lot, but normally he had reasonable tastes.
The consensus seems to be that the film makes no sense. Perhaps I am not good enough at analyzing these things, but I don’t quite see why. Sure, it is never really explained why the Elysium people have to keep their beautiful med-pods away from the poor population when they can just share with everybody for free. I agree with that, but this logical fallacy does not really make the film any worse. If anything, it probably show that people don’t really want to share, even when they can basically give it out for free. Instead of eating out tonight, you could just as well give that money to the Red Cross. But you wouldn’t, right? Instead, we are treated to a rather nice depiction of, embodied by Jodie Foster’s character who seriously believes that her families and friends are endangered if she lets ‘the others’ get what they have too. It’s a lovely premise and works perfectly for the character she is. Delacourt is not an emotionless corporate minion like Carlyle, she fights for something she believes in, with methods which honestly I would have employed myself if I had the power. I thought she was a great antagonist.
One thing I did not particularly like about the film was the pointlessness of that Kruger character. He is so wonderfully gritty and interesting, yet at the end he basically has nothing to say and gets to do nothing in the end. Unlike Delacourt, he antagonizes everybody just for the sake of it, and all he seems to be good for is a final fighting scene. Maybe a little background to the character would have been nice?
Most importantly though, I loved the style of the film, I love that Wagner Moura was in it (haha he gained so much weight?) and I was deeply touched by the admittedly predictable scene in which the little girl finally got cured. Saving your little baby’s life is actually worth fighting for!
Perhaps my love for Elysium comes from the fact that we were finally able to enjoy an action film in theaters, and that everybody else in the party liked it. But then again, we all liked it independently from each other, so there is probably something to it. I definitely recommend the film, especially if you are into dystopian sci-fi. And now for the hail of bullets.
- I recently read that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are never successful at the same time. It’s probably true but “The Departed” is probably Matt Damon’s only other good film, and I will never get over how “Argo” is so popular. Eww.
- You all must watch Jodie Foster singing in French.
- I am actually uncomfortable with the fact that the ghetto is all hispanic people (with some blacks thrown in) whereas the Elysium crowd is white (and I think partially Asian) and they all speak French. Well at least they are not speaking German – that probably wouldn’t fit into the clichéd world of “Elysium” because German is somewhat white-trashy.
- I was not actually a fan of the goriness nor the shaky cameras in the film, but overall I like the dirty District 9 style. Whenever Blomkamp’s Chappie comes out, I will probably see it. Which reminds me that I need to watch Le Transperceneige.