In the first few minutes of Director Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, we are introduced to the earth of 2154. The wealthy have moved off planet to a
space station where all sickness is cured and life is idyllic--Elysium. On
earth, the poor and lower class live in a world which Dante would recognize as
one of the rings of the Inferno. Crime, overpopulation, poverty, depleted resources are
all that earth’s inhabitants can expect.
Max (played by Matt Damon in a heart-pumping action hero role) dreams of escaping from the earth and going to Elysium. An ex-con with little hope for the future, he is injured in a job related accident and exposed to a lethal
dose of radiation. His only hope of surviving is getting to Elysium. Max’s love
from his childhood, Frey (Alice Braga) has a child dying also. I won’t spoil
how they end up at Elysium, but the journey is action packed. We learn early on
what Homeland Security Head Delacourt (played with venom by Jody Foster) does to protect those on Elysium, so we
know the stakes are high and lethal.
The effects are impressive and the character of Max, who
only wants to survive, is Damon at the top of his form.
I had to laugh that one person criticized that there were
several dialects using a combination language. He was particularly upset with
Jodie Foster’s dialect. They obviously missed one of Blomkamp’s points—that in
our future our words and languages will meld into class languages, so the upper
classes may use French words while the lower classes will use German or Spanish.
I found the film quite rewarding and satisfying and felt it gave me a lot to think about in terms of what price we would pay for Elysium.
Elysium (2013) ****
No comments:
Post a Comment