Elysium // DVD Review
Sure, it looks good – great in fact – and the frequent action is uncompromising and well done, but it’s all a bit ham-fisted.
One of the strengths of the Sci-Fi genre has always been its ability to sneak forward-thinking social commentary into curmudgeonly conservative heads by allegorising it as stories about sexy aliens, or things exploding, or sexy aliens exploding. In the 50s and 60s, American Sci-Fi writers were deftly condemning McCarthyism and segregation with relative impunity, and it’s no surprise that TV’s first interracial kiss was seen on Star Trek. After all, by that point we’d already seen Kirk rutting with women of various colours many times.
In 2009 Neill Blomkamp continued this noble tradition with the surprise critical and commercial hit District 9 – a cannily disguised attack on racism in post-apartheid South Africa. So, Elysium, then, would be more of the same gritty, biting satire wrapped up in an action packed roller-coaster ride, right? Well, kinda…
It’s 2154 and the rich live on a brutally protected orbiting utopia called (you guessed it) Elysium, while the rest of us live on an impoverished Earth. Matt Damon’s an Earthbound ex-con trying to do the right thing, but an industrial accident leaves him needing medical treatment, and that’s only available on (you guessed it) Elysium, so he has to do one last etc. etc.
And therein lies the problem with Elysium for me. Sure, it looks good – great in fact – and the frequent action is uncompromising and well done, but it’s all a bit ham-fisted. “Yes, you’re right, Neill Blomkamp,” I found myself saying, “the ever-widening disparity between rich and poor in our present-day, ultra-capitalist hegemony IS a huge concern,” I continued. But I was saying that after 20 minutes. From thereon in it’s a competent but standard heist-gone-wrong flick, and after a particularly cringe-inducing scene with Damon and a dying kiddiewink I knew exactly how it was going to end.
The thing about (you guessed it) Elysium is that its heart is in the right place but its other organs are all over the shop, and, unless you’re a piss-witted tory boy that thinks the poor get what they deserve, it has little to say.
Jay Freeman
