Review: Elysium

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie such as Elysium, one that’s not just visually, but also intellectually stimulating and emotionally invigorating. I was so glad my roommate Morgan and I went to go see it.

Plus we had a laugh afterwards making fun of right conservatives’ reactions to this movie.

Elysium, directed by District 9‘s Neil Blonkamp, depicts a world where the rich literally live above us all, in a Mercedes-logo satellite called Elysium where there is no war, crime, or sickness and all the buildings look like a cross between mansions, Greek temples, and sci-fi edifices. On Earth, the rest of humanity have to deal with poverty, non-existent education, sickness, and crime. That is, until Max de Costa, played by Matt Damon without any hair, gets hit by radiation during a workplace accident and learns he has five days to live. Returning to his old criminal contacts, Max will go to great length to go to Elysium and save his life. What happens next will change the course of human history forever.

What was interesting about this film was that it didn’t follow the normal flow for a sci-fi action movie of this sort, which is introduce the world and the conflict, dive right into the action, have your resolution after a ton of explosions and deaths, all while avoiding character development that can’t be done in a few frames or in a very tense emotional scene with romantic or beautiful background music. Instead, Elysium flows more like a novel, with a slow but steady build-up to the catalyst that causes the conflict in the story, several twists and turns of action and espionage and deceit in the middle, full of character development that penetrated deeply into your soul, and an ending that, while unconventional for sci-fi movies, left you feeling satisfied and full of joy and hope.

Unless of course you’re a right wing conservative, which means you left this movie in tears because you thought you saw the future.

Elysium was well-executed in terms of filmmaking. The settings were vivid in their portrayals of excessive wealth and terrible degradation, the special effects were extremely realistic, and the ways you could relate this film to our own lives and the United States political system these days are many (not surprising, considering whom the director is). My one complaint is that at one point, the all-powerful healing machines do something that I think is a little like cheating, but other than that an excellent movie.

For all of the above, I give Elysium a 4.5 out of 5. Best of all, no bad sequels. I cannot wait for what Neil Blonkamp will make next.