Blomkamp's 'Elysium'

 

Earth, 2154. The planet is plagued by disease, famine, poverty, overpopulation and other nasties. The rich have relocated to 'Elysium', a super-advanced paradisiac habitat that orbits the earth, leaving the poor to suffer. Max Da Costa (Matt Damon), an orphan raised by nuns, is a convicted felon, out on parole, living in squalor and working at a droid-manufacturing plant owned by Armadyne, a security technology corporation. One day Max is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, in a work accident, and is left with only 5 days to live, before his organs shutdown. Max must leave earth, where he cannot receive life-saving medical attention, and get to Elysium, where he can access a 'Med-Bay', an ultra-advanced device that can cure almost any disease and heal almost any type of injury. But there are many perilous obstacles in Max's way, that he must surmount at any cost, and therein lies the spellbinding tale.

 

I like Trent Opaloch's cinematography. This film is a feast for the eyes. The scenes that depict the wasteland that earth has become, have virtually no colour, and this 'bleached' look, accentuates the desolation. This reminds me of an article I read some years back -- an interview that filmmaker David O. Russell gave. Russell talked about his brilliant film 'Three Kings', which also has the 'bleached' look that the 'earth segments' of 'Elysium' have. Russell said that he and his collaborators used a process called 'Bleach Bypass', to achieve the 'washed out' look of 'Three Kings', which was meant to give the film a realistic sheen -- like news footage. I wonder if they used the same process for 'Elysium'.

The scenes that are set on the paradise that is Elysium, are the visual opposite of those scenes set on earth. On Elysium, it's 'All Colours Go!' Every conceivable colour appears here. The whole colour gamut is restored in these scenes. We see lush, green lawns; bright red security droids and bright red helicopters, amongst other things. This richness of colour on Elysium, juxtapositioned with the scarcity of colour on earth, hits home the idea that these two places are vastly different.

 

It took me some time to get used to Sharlto Copley, as a villain. He just seems like this approachable, gentle human being who wouldn't harm a fly -- the kind of person whom you approach to play a sort of nerdy character, like his Wikus van der Merwe from 'District 9'. Had Copley played the bloodthirsty, psychologically disturbed mercenary, Kruger, without a beard, I doubt very much that I would have found him believable. The copious amounts of facial hair -- his beard -- gave his 'soft' face some grit, and ultimately helped me suspend my disbelief.

The beautiful actress Alice Braga, who plays Frey, Max's love interest, seems to be making a name for herself in big-budget Sci-Fi fare, such as 'Elysium'. She played opposite Will Smith's Robert Neville, in the Francis Lawrence-directed 'I Am Legend'. She played opposite Jude Law in Miguel Sapochnik's dystopian artificial-organ-repossession actioner 'RepoMen'. And now this. Braga is a highly capable actress. I enjoy her work, a great deal.

'Armadyne', the name of the droid-manufacturing corporation in this film, struck me as a nod to 'Cyberdyne Systems', a similar corporation in the 'Terminator' series of movies. And the name of Matt Damon's character Max, struck me as a reference to the character popularised by Mel Gibson, in the dystopian 'Mad Max' movies.

 

The camera moves in a pretty interesting way, in the scene where Max and a couple of Spider's (Wagner Moura) men, conduct a 'data heist' -- stealing 'organic data' from the brain of Armadyne CEO, John Carlyle (William Fichtner). Specifically, just after Max has fired 'air-burst' rounds (from what seems to be a suped-up AK-47) at one of Carlyle's security droids, which shatter it, spectaculary, into tiny pieces. And when Max moves away from this spot, to the downed shuttle, where John Carlyle is, the camera sort of 'locks' onto Max, who becomes the visual center of the frame, and 'pivots' from him, whenever it moves. And as Max moves around, one can see, for lack of a better description, 'video scan lines', which briefly make the movie feel like a 3D shooting video game, which is very enjoyable to see. Blomkamp did something similar to this, with the camera, in 2009's 'District 9', which was also fun to see.

 

There's an interesting mix of languages in this film -- English, Afrikaans, Spanish and a bit of French. It's not often that one comes across such. I am intrigued by the fact that Jodie Foster, who plays power-hungry Defense Secretary Delacourt, can speak French and has appeared in ‘A Very Long Engagement’, a film by renowned French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I found it interesting that it was mostly Hispanic people that were fighting to reach Elysium. And Elysium seemed to be populated mostly by White people. Hmm.
This is the first film in which I've seen a super-advanced Bugatti shuttle, that can accelerate to supersonic speed, in seconds, and a super-advanced Versace tanning bed. I found this imaginative. The shuttle impressed me more. It's a triumph of flying vehicle design. All of the design in 'Elysium' is impressive, from the environments; to the vehicles; to the weapons; to the droids and other things. It's all absolutely impressive. I haven’t yet fathomed the mechanics behind the exo-skeletons worn by Max and Kruger, but these devices were so beautifully realised, I was willing to suspend my disbelief.

 

Ryan Amon's score is nothing short of magnificent. There's a certain very poignant piano-based theme that plays just before Max dies, while he's saying his last words to Frey -- 'Max and Frey' would be an appropriate name for it -- it's magnificent. This theme carries over into the sequence showing the Emergency Medical Services ships being deployed to earth, and closes the film. Then follows the piece that plays at the beginning of the end credits roll, with its exquisite strings, or is it wind instruments? I'm not sure. It's achingly beautiful.

Max has to die, so that the poor masses of earth may enter Elysium -- paradise. Is he a messiahnic figure? In the climactic fight between Max and Kruger, towards the end of the film, the camera lingers on the blood flowing from Max's hand -- a wound inflicted by the blade-loving Kruger. Could this be a reference to the stigmata of Christ -- the holes pierced through his palms, as he was nailed to the cross? Is any of this... religious symbolism?

Why does Max sometimes experience fleeting, but severe head pain, when he encounters Kruger? Kruger has bits of metal sticking out of each of his cheeks -- is he some kind of cyborg? Are these remnants of the various surgical procedures that he has undergone (perhaps in a 'Med-Bay'), for injuries sustained on the job?

 

Interestingly, Carlyle has the word "RICHE", which I think is French for ''rich'', imprinted on his right cheek.

The location of Max and Kruger's final confrontation -- a sort of bridge, linking two buildings, one of them housing The Core; the 'central processing unit' that runs Elysium -- is somewhat reminiscent of a Japanese garden, because of the few pink flower blossoms (what the Japanese might call "sakura") that are on either side of it.

 

It's interesting how director Neill Blomkamp is taking Afrikaans culture (and South African culture in general) to the world, through his films. Sharlto Copley's psychotic Kruger is the caricature of the bad Afrikaner, gleefully taken to extremes. This makes for some welcome bursts of comic relief, sprinkled throughout the film. There's even a scene in which Kruger sings an Afrikaans lullaby to a child. Afrikaans words like 'lekker', 'boet', 'kak' and 'boitjie', are used liberally. 'Elysium' is 'more Afrikaans', so to speak, than Blomkamp's previous 'District 9'. Here he really let's loose. And quite enjoyably so.

I like Blomkamp's brand of Sci-Fi. It has a great deal of heart. The human element always transcends the pseudo-technology, no matter how awe-inspiring that technology may be. Okay, I may have overshot the mark there, as I have seen only two of his feature-length films.

I have watched 'Elysium' three times thus far, not knowing that this particular (bootleg) DVD had English subtitles, so I missed everything that was said in Spanish. I only discovered the subtitles when I was well into my essay, while watching particular scenes and verifying my recollections. I decided that if this piece was ever going to see the light of day, I would have to let that go. I had spent more time than necessary, altering, adding and primping, already. "A work of art is never finished", they say, "it is abandoned."

Liebesman's 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'

 

So I finally watched Jonathan Liebesman’s ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ last night, courtesy of my 8-year-old nephew Ethan, who (to cut a long story short) acquired the DVD. The following are my first impressions, which are likely to alter with subsequent viewings.

Ethan was educating me, telling me the names of the four Turtles, by colour, and I listened humbly to his Master Splinter-like wise counsel. It was cute. I was watching the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ animated TV series; eating TMNT ice cream; buying a TMNT colouring book and keeping it in pristine condition; and drawing the Turtles for my classmates in primary school, about 15 years before he was born. So, it was cute.

Designer Massimo Vignelli said “If you do it right, it will last forever.” The ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ are a perfect example of this. In the early ‘90s, when I was a preteen, the TMNT were all the rage. Now two and a half decades later, I’m 33-years-old, and TMNT are still a hot commodity. Creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman outdid themselves. They created a pop culture phenomenon that has stood the test of time, that has lasted ‘forever’. Okay 25 years isn’t ‘forever’, but you get the point.

 

It’s difficult to make a child-friendly science fiction-action-adventure-comedy movie, in which there are four giant reptiles who wield Ninja weapons and a ‘robot samurai’ who shoots knives from his arms. Liebesman had the task of restraining the gore and not showing a single trace of blood (except in the ‘blood draining’ scene) in this film where bullets, katana, bo-staff, sai and nunchaku, fly in almost every frame, without looking ridiculous. He pulled it off. Although, I think the child-friendly rating (PG-13), kept this film from really soaring, from achieving its full potential. Had TMNT had an ‘R’ Rating, it would have been a much better film, I think.

 

When bad guy scientist Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) had Leonardo (Johnny Knoxville), Donatello (Jeremy Howard) and Michaelangelo (Noel Fisher), in his clutches and was marveling at these mutated humanoid reptiles, that he and other scientists, unwittingly created, he said something like “And to think, we could have used rabbits!” This struck me as a nod to cartoonist Stan Sakai’s rabbit bodyguard, Usagi Yojimbo. I enjoyed this.

When Splinter (Tony Shalhoub) tells the Turtles how they ended up in the sewers, that it was the young April O’Neil (Megan Fox) who saved them from a laboratory fire and brought them here, he calls April a ‘hogosha’ – a guardian spirit. Then one of the Turtles says, quite funnily and somewhat reverentially, “Dude, like, our friend is a guardian spirit” or something like that. I found this amusing.

 

The action sequences, though impressively elaborate and ambitious (e.g. the chase down a snow-covered slop), left me a little underwhelmed. Why? Perhaps it’s because I felt a sense of deja vu, as though I had seen it all before. In one shot, I felt that a CG character didn’t interact convincingly with a human actor. This is when April meets Splinter for the first time. We see this brief shot of them facing one another, but Megan Fox, to me, doesn’t look like she can actually see the computer-generated Splinter. Did the problem lie with the acting, or the VFX, or both?

 

There are four giant turtles and one giant rodent, who have a familial bond; unwittingly form an alliance with a female reporter; have mastered Asian-style armed and unarmed combat; live beneath a gigantic city that is threatened by a diabolical scientist and an evil, shadowy master of the war arts. I am looking for the subtext and symbolism, in this premise. I can’t find any.

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’, this name manages to combine four disparate elements – a phase in the growth or aging of a human being, a genetic phenomenon, an ancient martial art used by mercenaries in feudal Japan, and a reptile that resembles a tortoise – and makes it look natural. This is quite a feat, if you ask me.

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ is a great deal of fun to watch. I look forward to watching it again.