Spoiler Alert: Elysium

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f9/Elysium_Poster.jpg/220px-Elysium_Poster.jpg

Elysium, a science-fiction film brought to you by the same people that created the film nominated for four Academy Awards, District 9, is story set in 2154, when the rich have fled the Earth to live on a construct space station called Elysium, and left Earth and its inhabitants in shambles. The atmosphere in Earth is ridden with disease and pollution and the people neither receive the medical care nor the money to find similar care, and not even the right to try. The film, much like District 9, deals with socio-political themes such as immigration, over-population, poverty, corruption and so on. It follows the story of Max Da Costa, played by Matt Damon, as he is exposed to a harmful dose of radiation at his workplace and given five more days to live. Max does not want to die and decides to fly to Elysium to receive the necessary medical attention that can be provided there. Of course, everything has a price and so begins the epic journey to Elysium with its losses and its gains.

First of all, if you enjoyed D9, you must watch Elysium. The style is different and emphasis is placed on different things. I for one found myself extremely involved in the emotions that were being projected in D9, however with Elysium, I couldn’t relate to Matt Damon’s character at all, but instead I was looking at the bigger pictures, and I was being more critical about the facts. The premise of the movie is quite similar to that of Cowboy Bebop or Firefly – no matter how good the technology gets, and no matter how much of the universe we conquer, the rich will live well and the poor will suffer. In Elysium, people can use these “med-beds” to reconstruct their body completely to the point of curing any illness, and even changing their own appearance, people on Earth die of every disease you can think of and no help is provided. The story is set in future L.A. filled with slums and criminals. I find this location choice very interesting as for one thing, the USA – nation of immigrants, still filled with racism and this false idea of nationality – left in a state where they are trying to immigrate to Elysium. It is made even more interesting as it seems as though all the central characters either don’t speak English as their first language or at least have another language that they speak fluently – you put all these different races and nationalities together but at the end of the day, the rich stay with the rich and the poor stay with the poor. Secondly, just watching a city like L.A. in bits and pieces, the way it was shown in the film, you start to wonder what might have happened to the third world countries of today.

In the movie, everything is automated to the point where law and justice are handled by robots and droids. It was a nice and sly commentary, I think, on how workers of the law act even these days. You watch these droids man handling and breaking an ex-criminal’s arm while he was on his way to work because they confused a joke for abuse/violence. The ex-criminal then has to speak with his parole officer only to find that no matter what he says, the officer will extend his parole, and as the officer is also a machine, it will work on data provided to assume that the ex-criminal will become aggressive so immediate cautions need to be taken. It was the same way with the Prawns in D9, these people aren’t there to help them or listen to them, and they are just working in a pre-planned manner because they are programmed to assume danger. And when you watch people of law handling criminals and ex-criminals and any suspected criminal even today, you can see that robotic instinct in them to just assume the worst case scenario and make the job for themselves simple and easy.

Elysium is an amazing film that is basically slapping today’s politics, justice and immigration laws in the fact with a huge bat. It sheds light on many of the problems today and how the solutions may be a lot simpler than we think. Please watch the movie and if you have already, share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Signing off

Pigment Editor