The Heavy Handed, Dull Sci-Fi Spectacle and Allegory of "Elysium"

Director Neill Blomkamp sure does love metaphors and symbolism. District 9 is a not all that subtle critique of apartheid. But where District 9 had enough story to stand on its own beyond the underlying message, Elysium, Blomkamp's second film, falters far more in attempting its allegory (actually it's more like ALLEGORY). The film is set over a hundred years into the future where a ravaged, diseased Earth has caused the wealthiest of mankind to flee to a magical, all-purpose space station called Elysium; meanwhile those less fortunate other 98% struggle to get by on an Earth that has become all but a giant cesspool slum. Blomkamp (who also wrote the film) appears to be someone who believes that there really is a class warfare at present. The members of Elysium are one-dimensional villains (including Jodie Foster playing a bizarrely accented -- though somehow not the worst fake accent, that would be rogue mercenary Sharlto Copley's-- Secretary of Defense who attempts to stage a coupe in order to increase her own power) who only care about protecting their own interests and making money. A caste system is in place where the people of Earth serve at the bidding of those from Elysium.

Matt Damon plays Max, a guy who's end ended up on the wrong side of the tracks (which means little as everyone on Earth is consumed by poverty). There's a mushy intro about Max and his childhood friend/sweetheart Frey (played as an adult by Alice Braga) making plans to one day make it up to Elysium (Frey, of course, appears later, a now distant figure removed from Max's life who he attempts to win back over). If you're questioning if Max will end up going to Elysium than you're hoping for a far more complex film. Elysium is direct and on the nose about nearly everything it does.

The action is gritty and visceral but meanders and rambles on at times (Both in terms of staging and placement within the story). The film draws out certain story points out for unnecessary lengths. It seems to take the film an unorthodox amount of time to get our hero on a direct course for Elysium. Max's crappy, parole mandated job gets him in an accident that leaves him with radiation poison that gives him but 5 days to live; so he wants to get to Elysium to use their magic insta-healers. But before he can do that he has to get fake ID's and transportation from Spider (Wagner Moura), a former criminal partner. But Spider has a task for Max to complete before he can head up to Elysium. And this is only the start of a series of plots that side track the film, including a plot about Max stealing data information from the brain of his former boss, only to get caught up in the middle of the Secretary of Defense's coupe plot. None of the side tracking makes any sense when it's so very obvious where the film intends to end up. And even that ending somehow falls apart in messy, convoluted and head-scratching ways.

In the micro, Elysium ably distracts us from its implausibility issues but in the macro (seemingly the thing it should be nailing due to the allegory angle) it's best you don't ponder it over too much. Avatar took a similar allegorical angle and had equivalent problems; too much schematizing, too many sketchy, underdeveloped characters. But at least with Avatar I felt like I knew the world that was Pandora; it was a vast, rich, gorgeously depicted world that felt worth exploring. This far flung future Earth gives me so little to go on as to what makes this world worth being invested in (It's futuristic, sure. But what about this world makes it unique and different from any other future, sci-fi society? It's built up extensively and yet I feel as though I know so little about it). And that's the problem with allegories, if the themes and ideas and grandness aren't constantly huge and don't constantly push towards proving the argument the film's making than at times it feels hollow and overly simplistic. Or if there's not enough the film can give us beyond its allegory than the film rests on how compelling the subtext is, which in the case of Elysium is dull and heavy handed.    

The film stacks the deck so heavily against us liking the citizens of Elysium. The Earthlings have less than nothing and counting. The people of Elysium have everything (and are absolute assholes). That's not a very interesting conflict; the potential for tension has mostly been sapped out. I enjoyed parts of Elysium but I was taking them in at arms length; the film rarely engrossed me its world. That's a shame. Sci-fi is about possibilities; transporting us to a time and place. I never felt there were many possibilities, just one, and this time and place was not interesting or detailed enough to make me feel like I was there.

Grade: C