ELYSIUM

(Neill Blomkamp, 2013)

I love when a movie starts with a low burble of 1980s synthesiser. Which is exactly how Neill Blomkamp's Elysium begins.
After that, it dips a little. Sun-hazy scenes of children in a dystopian future Los Angeles and rapid world-building clutter the first act, establishing a 2154 world where the rich (mainly white) citizens of Earth have fled to Elysium, an orbiting "habitat" on a space station where there is constant sunshine, no sickness and none of the nasty Latinos who fill the overpopulated slums of Earth. That is where we find Max (Matt Damon) one of the children from those sun-hazy scenes. An ex-con now working in a factory, an industrial accident leaves him with only days to live, and Elysium and its miraculous machines becomes his only hope. To get there he undergoes surgery fusing him with an exoskeleton, giving him strength the equal of the droids patrolling both worlds as sentinels. But Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and the vicious Kruger (Sharlto Copley) stand in his way, and the need to get the terminally ill daughter of his old friend Frey (Alice Braga) to Elysium doesn't make it any easier.
The allegory here is perhaps too obvious and too simple, but at least Blomkamp is trying to say something, at least his film has something on its mind beyond its explosions and weak, predictable character arcs. Because for all that it is thematically a little trite, its major flaw is the cheesiness of much of its drama, from the awkward characterisation of players like Wagner Moura's frequently unintelligible gang boss Spider, to the dull, overly simplified politicking on Elysium itself involving Delacourt and William Fichtner's hollow cartoon of a spineless executive. The scenes showcasing Max's daily life recall similar scenes in other sci-fi films (last year's tepid Total Recall remake, for instance) without ever transcending them.
But Blomkamp is at home with action. He understands how it works and how to work it. He can make an action sequence really sting, and once the story proper gets underway here and Max is in motion, the film takes on its own momentum which renders some of the other complaints largely irrelevant. Blomkamp shoots action scenes which are coherent (a rarity in modern spectacle filmmaking), visceral and thrillingly nasty. Violence in his world has consequences. People get hurt, faces get pulped. But he is able to combine that brutality with a gee-whiz quality, indulging in cool shots and relishing the process of the fights he is depicting. Max is an amateur throughout, a little out of his depth even when augmented, which helps lend a pleasing edge of suspense to the climactic face-off with Kruger. Their fighting styles are individual too; Max doesn't really know what he is doing even as he grows more confident in his new strength, whereas Kruger is a specialist and perhaps overconfident as a result.
That they have an (immensely satisfying) final showdown indicates how well Blomkamp understands the needs of the action genre.
Damon is a massive boon to a film like this; an undoubted movie star, he combines a charismatic watchability with an everyman quality, and he has the acting chops to pull off Max's desperation and his slow journey towards acceptance of what must happen. Copley (as usual?) chews scenery throughout, but he does offer a scary sense of unpredictable threat which contributes to the tension of the last act. Jodie Foster, on the other hand, makes a series of terrible decisions, speaking in a weird accent, opting for oddly inappropriate or campy line-readings which rob her pivotal scene of much of its intended impact. Alice Braga is typecast here as the spunky-yet-soulful Latin spitfire we've seen her play many times before.
The technical credits are all strong, with the production design particularly inventive; underlining the allegory, this is a future-world that looks very much like now, and the differences between Earth tech (worn down, gritty, industrial) and Elysium tech (slick, seamless, digital) only add to the palpable textures of Blomkamp's film. That helps when it comes to the body horror element of the plot, which, as in his previous film, the similarly interesting but flawed District 9, is one of the strongest passages here.

ON THE ROAD

(Walter Salles, 2012) I've got issues with Jack Kerouac's "On The Road". I read it at 17, and even then it seemed like I was too old for such a book, too cynical to be impressed by these tales of beatnik debauchery and striving for artistic greatness. I appreciated much of the writing but many of the attitudes and characters seemed silly to me. In a way, watching Walter Salles' adaptation of the novel (which benefits from a fine script by Jóse Rivera) persuaded me that Salles has a similarly conflicted relationship with the novel. For as much as On The Road is a faithful, respectful attempt to get a literary classic right, it is also an insightful, acute criticism of its own source material. Rivera and Salles get right to the heart of the materials preoccupations with a first act filled with jazz, drinking, drugs, lots of sex, Kerouac proxy Sal Valentine (Sam Riley) scribbling away feverishly in a notebook, and much conversation about creativity and freedom. Salles finds just the right idiom for it all; his mainly handheld camera, quick editing and a real attention to the textures of life in 1940s America all giving it an immediacy and intimacy, while the lovely photography courtesy of Eric Gautier ensures it carries an elegiac, poetic quality from the start. That allows for a deeper examination of the novel; specifically of its view and treatment of women. Every male freedom in On The Road is balanced by female pain, and Salles ensures that his camera catches every such instance. Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) leaves a trail of crushed and scorned women in his wake, swapping them like shirts, abandoning them on street corners and in apartments with his infant children, always seeking the next thrill with his buddies. Strong casting helps here. Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Stewart each give their role a charge of intelligence, disappointment and bitter heartbreak as two of Dean's wives, while Elizabeth Moss has one furious rant directed at Dean and one of his friends. Only Alice Braga - as an itinerant labourer briefly involved with Sal - and Amy Adams seem content in their lives, surrounded by children and her heroin addict husband (Viggo Mortenson, having a great time as Old Bull Lee, Kerouac's version of William Burroughs), who is the first one of the group who questions Dean's motives and saintliness. Hedlund is terrific as Dean. Just charismatic and interesting enough that his hold over so many people is believable, but with an edge of vulnerability and insecurity that makes him seem intensely human. Riley has less to do as Sal, but he gets across the watchfulness of a writer well, and the intensity of their relationship carries the film. The beauty of the photography and of the many desert landscapes, sunsets and mountain views certainly don't hurt, and even act as a partial explanation for the attraction of life on the road in this vanished America. There is also a strain of acute longing here, the cloying self-regard often obvious in Kerouac's writing transformed into something far more melancholic and interesting here. These are men in search of fathers - this made more explicit by a small change to the first line of the novel, emphasising a connection between Sal and Dean - and burying themselves in experience, travel and excess. Another aspect altered from the novel is the explicit homosexuality here; Dean is conflicted about his relationship with Carlo, but his scenes with an older travelling companion (Steve Buscemi) suggest his crushing need for intimacy with a father-figure, and the homophobia present in many of the books asides is exchanged for the good-humoured amusement seen in Sal's face on a few occasions. The story is thin, of course, following these friends as they criss-cross the country from New York to California via Denver, but it accrues emotional power as it follows the roads they speed down, until one final betrayal, in a vividly-evoked Mexico, has a particular sting. As a beat film, this is outstanding, Salles finding the perfect rhythym and register for such a story, intent upon the quiet moments, the lost moments of thought and regret. And as a literary adaptation, it is uncommonly intelligent and piercing. In all, then, this is a massively surprising success.