Like his 2009 sci-fi classic “District 9,” “Elysium” has the distinct dystopian touch of writer-director Neill Blomkamp: Slums surrounded by desert wastelands, futuristic weapons and gadgets encrusted in grime and blood, and a sweaty everyman hero who has a chance to change the course of human history for the better.
But while “Elysium” is a great-looking film with action sequences that hold one’s attention, it just kind of floats there in a context-free future. We have the super-rich living on the artificial satellite world of Elysium, living in mansions and having pool parties. Then we have the super-poor living in Earth’s bombed-out slums and — like our hero, Max (Matt Damon) — working on assembly lines for meager pay while being treated horribly. Some are a bit better off, like Frey (Alice Braga), a doctor, but even she is at the mercy of both the police state (with its flying drones and robot officers) and the criminal class that thrives anyway.
Blomkamp delivers a fairly juicy sci-fi text that raises tons of questions about how society got to be like this, but unfortunately, no answers are forthcoming in the film. Max gets exposed to deadly radiation on his assembly-line job, and — now with nothing to lose — teams up with tech-savvy revolutionaries to infiltrate Elysium’s computer system to make everyone “citizens.”
“Elysium’s” plot is not hard to follow — and it’s not hard to root for Max and Frey — but every action seems devoid of context. Why does Max’s supervisor risk exposing him to radiation rather than just using a robot to remove the obstruction? Out of sheer cruelty, I suppose, but that can’t look good in his performance review if his workers are dying.
Furthermore, Elysium has these magic MRI-like tubes that can instantly detect and heal any malady. There’s one in every home. Now granted, the Earth populace couldn’t afford to have one in every home, but you gotta think there’d be some of these tubes down there. It would make sense for Max’s employer to heal him and send him back on the job. If you’re running Elysium and you want to keep the peasants in line, you gotta give them some goodies, otherwise you’re begging for revolution; a magic MRI seems like it would fit the bill wonderfully.
“Elysium” is perhaps an extrapolation of where today’s crony corporatism is taking us, with the rise of the 1 percent holding and controlling a huge chunk of the wealth. Yet it seems like the incredible technology of Elysium — not only can every illness be instantly healed, but the device can also de-age people! — couldn’t come about in a state where free thought and the free market were completely stifled, as they seem to be in the movie. And we know from looking at the past century that technological advances make everyone’s lives better — the poor see the improvements last, but eventually technology filters down.
The way Elysium holds onto its power is also bizarre. The military director (Jodie Foster) secretly hires a grizzled covert agent (Sharlto Copley) to blow the infiltrating immigrant ships out of the sky using a rocket launcher fired from Earth. If a ship gets through, soldiers — who are more armored suits than men — arrest everyone and presumably send them back to Earth. It seems this is a political strategy: She wants to plausibly deny that the government had a hand in the illegal immigrants’ murders. (Then again, we don’t meet a single Elysium resident who gives a rip about the plight of the Earth-bound.)
In the compelling but ultimately too-simplistic “Elysium,” Max figures he has nothing left to lose once he is given five days to live. Seeing how these people live even when they’re healthy, I wish they would’ve thrown off their shackles long before this point. It’s one thing to be poor and one thing to be oppressed, but the combination of the two should be intolerable.
What are your thoughts on “Elysium?” Does it portray a believable future, or did the movie need more explanation of the backstory?