The sky of night

Though Oscar Wilde said, “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars,” in Elysium, the super-rich have ensured that they alone will not be in the gutter but actually in the heavens, while the billions of wretches below look up at their gleaming space station like the Moon on a crisp morning.  From the South African director of District 9, Neill Blomkamp, this dystopia 150 years ahead of us has an apartheid between the haves and the have-nots, as relevant on the Veldt as it is for those Latin Americans seeking to pass across the Rio Grande and the massive Vietnam War-airfield tracks of fences or the Africans risking the hazardous voyage across the Mediterranean.

On this artificial moon, the rich operate a form of cabinet democracy where the only positive thing that can be said of them is that they operate equality amongst each other, irrespective of creed or colour.  But when the defence secretary Delacourt (a well-cast Jodie Foster, considering Contact) oversteps her jurisdiction and destroys two craft crammed with migrants trying to break into Elysium, her reprimand and the threat of dismissal leads her to plan a bloodless coup where she will become dictator.  This involves co-opting a failing robotics weapons manufacturer, John Carlyle, whose company also holds the design to the space station’s computer, with mammoth contracts; as Elysium is served and policed by robots, rewriting their programming would make her rule invincible.

On Earth, Max (an excellent Matt Damon), an ex-con in Los Angeles trying to go straight, meets his childhood friend Frey (Alice Braga), now a nurse, but then suffers a workplace accident in Carlyle’s factory in which he is fatally irradiated.  Given five days to live with the scant consolation of a bottle of pills to keep him alive as his company pay-off, he desperately seeks to go to Elysium where machines that can cure every conceivable ailment are at the disposal of the rich.  The human trafficker Spider (Wagna Moura) who is eventually one of the good guys will let Max go on the next transport as long as he kidnaps one of the super-rich, extracting the credit card details and other data that are cybernetically imprinted on their brains.  Carlyle’s dismissive attitude to Max’s imminent death, where he values the hospital sheets Max lay upon above that of human life, makes Max choose him as the mark.  As Max’s body is failing, he is given a robotic frame as well as a brain plug to take out Carlyle’s knowledge.

To protect Carlyle, Delacourt activates Kruger (Sharlto Copley, a veteran of Blomkamp’s District 9), a brutal mercenary.  Intervening just after Carlyle has been attacked and has had his data downloaded (Carlyle is mortally wounded in the outcome), Kruger and his two sadist compatriots, track Max back to Frey’s house (where she had brought him after he found her again at the hospital).  They take her and her daughter, who has terminal leukaemia, hostage and after Max learns from Spider the worth of his acquired data (“the keys to the kingdom,” in Kruger’s words), he agrees to be taken into custody and to Elysium.  The reckless arrogance of the mercenaries causes a crash-landing on Elysium and Max faces a battle, alongside Spider’s help (with Elysium’s defences distracted by the crash, he and a team sneak in on a transport of his), to get his information into the mainframe to allow Earth access to Elysium’s ivory tower, as well as saving the life of Frey’s daughter.

Like Pacific Rim, I hadn’t really expected that much of Elysium from the trailer, but after seeing that it had received stellar reviews, affirming Blomkamp’s rising star, I thought it worth a view and was I not disappointed.  My wife, who has a low tolerance for space theatrics, was as captivated as myself.  There are a few predictable elements – the moment it becomes clear that Frey’s daughter is dying, Max’s friend, Julio (Diego Luna), is obviously going to be killed, to make space for her on a Spider transport, although the plot, once again, derivates from the traditional thereafter; Delacourt losing out in a confrontation with Kruger – yet overall, the film has a fresh take on most things futuristic, as well as being a parable of our current times.  The acting is top-notch, the suspense is kept taut and the script is plausible and engaging. 

The name itself Elysium has a double-meaning: firstly from Greek mythology where those related to or chosen by the pantheon of deities could live a perpetually happy existence in the afterlife; secondly, though, I am reminded of Gladiator where Maximus fires up his troops – “If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!” – the same could be said of the super-rich, their morally hollow shells as empty as the space they inhabit, as they poison Earth for their own corporate gain whilst being shielded from its effects and disowning responsibility for it.  The struggle for healthcare is particularly poignant given the political conflict over its extension in the USA.  Without giving the ending away, the rich will always find a way to isolate themselves from the less well-off.  Five out of five.