The story takes place 150 years in the future where Earth has become so overpopulated, polluted, and diseased that those with means have literally abandoned it, taking refuge on a massive orbiting space station known as Elysium. There, they can indulge in a lavish, care-free existence in their Spanish-style McMansions surrounded by perfected manicured gardens, worries about disease and death banished by miraculous medical bays that are able to cure literally anything in seconds. Meanwhile, the millions left behind on Earth struggle to survive amid the lack of resources and clean air, with everyone packed into ramshackle shantytowns plagued with crime and disease. Elysium, as visible in the sky as the moon or sun, hangs over them constantly, a paradise to which they can never aspire (the idea of upward mobility has been killed; if anyone tries to break into Elysium illegally, they are shot down).

The film’s protagonist is Max (Matt Damon), who grew up an orphan believing that one day he might be able to make it to Elysium, but instead finds himself a grown man in his late-30s with a long criminal record and no chance of moving beyond his miserable station in life. Max is committed to getting straight, which is why he submits to working a menial assembly-line job at a massive factory that produces the robotic police officers who maintain order on Earth with fascist intensity (early on we see Max’s attempt at humor with one of the robots land him in jail and then opposite an even less humorless robotic parole officer).

When Max is exposed to radiation at work and is given only five days to live, he becomes intent on making it to Elysium where he can be cured. The near-impossibility of this feat is embodied by Delacourt (Jodie Foster, surprisingly stiff and mannered), Elysium’s Minister of Defense who shows no compunction about shooting down ships filled with women and children if they are technically “illegal.” She also employs a psychotic double agent named Kruger (District 9 lead Sharlto Copley, bearded and burly and virtually unrecognizable) to do her dirty work down on Earth. Max’s plan requires the assistance of Spider (Wagner Moura), a well-connected hacker who runs a kind of underground railroad trying to break people into Elysium and helps outfit Max with a metal exoskeleton to keep his deteriorating body going. It also eventually involves Frey (Alice Braga), Max’s childhood friend who now works as a nurse and is dealing with the fact that her 8-year-old daughter is dying of leukemia.

Blomkamp, who wrote and directed, approaches the narrative in such a way that virtually everything can be read through the lens of current headlines, whether it be the ever widening gap in income, embattled access to health care, or issues with illegal immigration. There is no doubt that Blomkamp rests heavily on the progressive perspective and sees any form of inequality as fundamentally antihuman, and in depicting the extremes to which inequality can eventually lead, Elysium is quite prescient in its social and political observation. The idea of the fabled 1% literally living among the stars while the other 99% suffer in the environmental and social wreckage wrought by their greed is strikingly literalized here, and Blomkamp daringly associates class and race by making virtually all of Elysium’s residents white while virtually everyone back on Earth is some shade of brown (it’s a self-conscious reworking of the unconscious racist elements of earlier sci-fi movies, such as When Worlds Collide, in which a small number of people, every single one of whom is white, escape Earth just before a rogue planet crashes into it).

But, what are we to do with the fact that Blomkamp has cast Max with a conventional white leading man, once again perpetuating cinema’s troubling “white savior” ideal? (Some spoilers to follow, so tread carefully if you haven’t seen the movie yet.) If ever there was ever a film that cried out for a minority protagonist, it is Elysium, yet here we are with Damon (a fine actor, by the way, who is mostly convincing with his neck tats and shaved head as a damaged, disparaged man looking for something better). The fact that Max literally sacrifices himself at the end of the film so that all the downtrodden on Earth will have access to Elysium’s medical care would be heavy-handed all by itself, but having Max be white and all the people he save some shade of brown feels surprisingly retrograde for a film that wears its progressive politics so prominently on its sleeve.

The film is further troubled by the fact that Blomkamp, having set up a dire situation for humankind, wants to make everything right, which leads to a genuinely ludicrous ending in which robotic medical ships standing by on Elysium are dispatched to Earth so that the millions suffering from lack of health care can be cured. Blomkamp’s optimism here is ludicrous, given that a situation of that magnitude would likely result in riots as desperate people, having been denied for decades, are suddenly presented with life-saving technology. Are we really to believe that the overpopulated masses would get in line and hold up their hands in joy while they wait their turn? Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, but the ending of Elysium strikes me as pure fantasy, which conflicts detrimentally with the rest of the film’s sharp-eyed depiction of humanity’s worst tendencies, both above and below the poverty line.

Copyright ©2013 James Kendrick

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