Elysium Made Me Angry

I loved District 9. It was this perfect use of using a sci-fi concept to both build a unique and fascinating setting while simultaneously exploring very touchy subjects relevant to the real world without having to poke them directly with a stick. The CG stuff melded shockingly well into the hand-held, documentary shooting style, and the story really made my feels start acting up. Plus, it made me think. I still use it as a reference point four years after its release. Oh, and maybe I should get around to writing that essay about District 9 and Avatar - two movies about a white dude, aliens, and that white dude eventually becoming an alien. Why does Avatar make me mad and District 9 kick ass? There’s a lot to say.

So that movie happens, and I’m very pleased by it. Then this past spring I’m walking by a wall of movie posters when I pass by a poster for Elysium:

[pic of the Elysium movie poster with Matt Damon’s back to camera]

Matt Damon is looking kinda subtly badass. The font is giving me an intriguingly pristine contrast to the weird, makeshift, spidery, robot suit he’s wearing, which I’m not quite diggin, but at least I haven’t seen done before. But wait, what’s that there at the bottom? From the director of District 9? Sign me up! This guy’s first movie was so great, he can only have learned things from there, right? I’m pumped.

But alas. Here we are in the present, and I know better now. I know not to blindly trust this Neill Blomkamp going forward. I know this because weeks after having seen Elysium, I’m still so angry about it.

Alright, let’s dig in. I’m going to start with what Elysium does right, because Elysium does start out right. There’s a different approach to exposition than the slightly out of place but charming and well executed documentary segments of District 9, but just like District 9, that exposition is some of the best that the movie has to offer. The world of Elysium may be an absolutely unashamed metaphor for class stratification in America, but that doesn’t make it bad. It’s kind of nice that it lets that metaphor just hang out there, not even attempting to tuck it back into its boxers. I respect that. Hell, I really enjoyed the fact that even my friends who don’t have much film studies training would open conversations about Elysium with “so how about that class warfare, eh?”

And it’s not just that metaphor, the whole world is pretty cool. It’s basically a post-apocalyptic world where the apocalypse was “everyone just stopped giving a shit”, and that’s cool. Also terrifying, because I totally buy it, but cool. Seeing Matt Damon’s childhood is a little cliche, but tropes exist because they’re effective, yes? I’m willing to let that stuff slide while we’re warming up our engines. The police unit is sufficiently Big Brotherly, that conversation between Damon and his parole office is hilarious and exposition filled. Nicely done.

Then we get our view into the underworld where people are trying to get to Elysium, and our first glimpse at Jodie Foster being a cold and harsh realist, and that cleverly disguised protagonist of Distrcit 9 shoots down everyone with a rocket launcher because he’s a badass. Shooting down those ships is a hard decision for Jodie to make, but she’s old and jaded - she knows what’s at stake, and she makes it in a heartbeat because of what she believes: Elysium is only so big, and if we let everyone up here, we’re going to run out of resources so quick no one will have anything left.

Wait. Except that’s not what happened. That’s just what I thought was going to happen, because that would make sense, and would be an actually interesting viewpoint to throw an ideal “free healthcare for everyone” worldview into conflict with. Instead, Jodie is dragged into a disciplinary hearing and told that actually we don’t wanna be killing people, and I guess if poor people wanna fly up here we should just let them? And Jodie gets all pissed and decides that, uh, her actual only driving motivation is that she’s an evil, power-hungry witch on a quest to stage a military coup so she can keep murdering people for her own amusement?

Let me be clear: Jodie does mention once that she’s all about Elysium’s longevity, and her actions are only to protect that. But wow is it not convincing, and she never brings it up again. It’s like the only reason she said it in the first place is because that logic probably goes over with the president much better than “because hiring out convicted murderer-rapists to shoot missiles at stuff is so much fun, and I really want to keep doing so”.

This is the crux of my problem with the film. There’s this great world constructed to take a look at the class issues of the modern day, issues that desperately need to be addressed. Remember Occupy Wall Street? How everyone was pissed and no one knew quite why or what to do about it? Those questions need to be answered, they need to get more time in the public spotlight, and blockbusters are a great place to keep that discussion on society’s collective subconscious. But Blomkamp takes this great setup for doing exactly that and decides that instead of there being two sides to this argument, there’s just gonna be Evil Jodie Foster and Christ Symbolism Matt Damon, and that’ll be enough of a discussion.

Just imagine for a moment that Jodie Foster actually believes that Elysium needs to keep people out for the greater good, that this extreme class divide really does benefit everyone somehow. You can make that argument! I’m sure you can, because republican candidates still get votes in this country. I’m sure you can, because I can actually imagine what such an argument looks like. I will fight you to my last breath that you’re wrong, but I can at least understand you. I can understand why providing universal healthcare is a potentially difficult and hard thing to do. I can understand why someone needs to be down there doing the heavy lifting in factories because there aren’t enough robots to go around. I understand that some people will always be better off than others just because even in perfect communism, some people are just born at the right time and place, and that life isn’t always fair. I may not draw the same conclusions from those points as you, but I will at least understand you. Imagine a hypothetical world where Matt Damon makes it to Elysium and confronts Jodie Foster only to have her explain that making everyone a citizen of Elysium will stretch its free healthcare booths so far that they’ll break, the human race will run out of energy, and millions will suffer. In the same way that I understand those arguments above, Damon would understand her and yet make the choice to give everyone that citizenship because for better or worse it’s the right thing to do.

But I don’t understand why someone would create a world perfectly framed to have that discussion, to get to that difficult and flawed, yet interesting and thought-provoking ending, and then give that all up so that Jodie Foster can be a one-dimensional monster and get shot and Matt Damon can cut his hands open for maximum stigmata symbolism.

I have a million other smaller complains, but I’m getting tired, so here are a few in list form:

1. Why did so many people need to explode? Did I really need to see that?

2. Why did Blomkamp reduce the whole class metaphor thing to universal healthcare? Pro-tip: universal healthcare is not the only issue dividing the upper class from the lower class these days!

3. Did Jodie Foster really not have any qualms about hiring out convicted rapists? Really? Really?

4. That robot suit just looked stupid. I mean, just fucking stupid.

5. Why did Matt Damon’s friend just kind of agree to come along while Matt was negotiating with the guy who could get them up to Elysium? He was all like “dude, you will fucking 100% die if you go up there, don’t do it,” and then like two seconds later he was all like “aight dude, I’m down to go up there with you.” For someone who has just been talking about how this whole mission is suicide and yet has so far not revealed any particular loyalty to Damon beyond basic human decency nor revealed any particularly suicidal tendencies, he sure was ready to head into raging gunfire and get filled full of holes. But I suppose his death will make the stakes that much higher for Damon, which is a better motivation for someone in this movie than most!

I’m sure I could go on, but I saw this movie like 3 weeks ago and have spent most of that time trying to repress it. Seriously though. This movie absolutely squanders an incredible premise, and from a director who’s first movie held so much promise, I expected better. I expected characters with basic motivations, who weren’t just evil for evil’s sake. When you’re in a position to make big movies and you have the heart and the passion and the desire to spread a message like the person who made District 9 clearly does, you have a responsibility to make movies deeper than Elysium. You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to your audience.

Get back out there Blomkamp. I haven’t counted you out yet, because there’s still so much potential in these premises. But you gotta do better.

Sam out.

In Which I Burst Onto the Scene Once Again: Fall 2013 Edition

I’ve seen a lot of movies lately, and I’ve had many thoughts about them (as one does). And man, I’ve been wanting to write again, so let’s just see what comes out of my mouth-hole when I start pushing buttons on this here keyboard.

I went to a movie by myself today. I’ve never done that before. It was an interesting experience… it shed light on why seeing movies with other people is a key part of the experience for me. I feel I can’t get the most out of a movie without talking about it afterwards, trying to make my thoughts about it concrete by putting them into words while they’re still fresh. Without someone to bounce ideas off of, the whole thing will take much longer to percolate and bring fruitful thoughts to the surface, if indeed any such thoughts ever emerge. Actually, that’s pretty much how my brain works in all things, but whatever.

At the same time, the experience didn’t feel that off from normal to me. I made sure to arrive at the theater right as it started so I didn’t have to sit awkwardly in the theater by myself, but apart from that, the only thing I missed about having a viewing partner was not being able to make snide remarks about each preview as they were happening. Even after exiting the movie and now some time later, I feel just as I often do after most movies: like I didn’t get the chance to do that discussion thing as much as I wanted to. I think this means I’m supposed to try and talk about movies more with the people I see them with.

Maybe that percolating phase needs to happen before talking about something I’ve seen, as I’ve noticed that my best conversations about the movies I’ve seen this past month have come days later when talking to people I didn’t see the film with. We’ve each had a chance to come at the thing without influencing each other, and we’ve had a chance for our resulting opinions to solidify and congeal a little. Indeed, I felt like after I saw The Spectacular Now with 3 others and talked about it at a bar for an hour, we didn’t really do much except repeat what had happened in the movie. “Oh man, that part with the thing was really good. And all those long takes!” But three days later talking to someone else that had seen it and hated it, I learned so much more from their simple question of “What did you like about it?” and my resulting response than I did at the time of watching. Though that may be because different opinions about things lead to more dynamic ideas about them.

Whatever. The point is that I like talking about movies and should just do that more. Also I apparently being the guy seeing the movie by himself. OH! One nice bonus of being that guy is that I got to leave the theater exactly when I wanted to during the credits instead of trying to figure out whether or not my party was ready to leave and waiting on me or wanted to sit back and let the final frames wash over them through the duration of the credits. Nice.

The movie I saw was Short Term 12 ,which I highly recommend. It’s named for the central location of the film, a state run center for kids going through the foster home system who haven’t been placed yet, and who generally stay for around a year. The protagonist is this girl Grace, a 20-something who works at Short Term 12 as sort of the highest up person who still interacts directly with the kids. The whole thing was just… incredible. Great performances all around, and a hell of a script.

There was one particular scene that made me really appreciate the structure, around the 60 minute mark when everything is falling apart for Grace, another character gets a moment of hope. It took this series of events that was utterly harrowing to watch and gave the viewer an out. “Yeah,” the movie says, “all this shit sucks. It sucks a lot. Life can absolutely suck in ways that you can’t even imagine. But sometimes you get something you can hang on to, whether you make that yourself or have it given to you, and this is the kind of movie that believes those bits are worth living for.” It may have been interesting or more “powerful” or something to let the viewer just get crushed under the weight of it all in the same way that Grace is. I know people who would criticize the scene I’m referring to exactly because it tints the climax of the movie with that glimmer of hope. But that hope is part of the movie’s point, and I love that a little something found under a couch cushion in a plotline entirely removed from our hero can keep that hope alive in me as a viewer. Story structure! Woo!

And that scene with the baseball bat… just… amazing. And the beginning / ending… Here I go listing things about the movie I liked without adding anything new to them. Maybe I should let this one sit a little longer.

I’ve been thinking recently about moments in movies when characters tell stories. There’s this thing that happens for me in real life where someone will start telling a story, and if it’s a good one, I’ll stop seeing. It’s not that my brain stops receiving visual input from my eyes, it’s just that it discards that information as unimportant and turns its energy towards building up its own image of the story being told: a man on a bus with tacos rumbling in his stomach. Taking that step off the bus and feeling shit run down your legs (you gotta see Short Term 12, people). I start to picture these things instead of what’s in front of me.

So in a movie when a character tells a story, you can do two things: you can either try and build that story-world image for your audience (see the genius of Seven Psychopaths) or you can just show the people talk (Chasing Amy). There’s obviously reasons you’d use either one - having control over your audience’s image is a powerful thing, but so is letting their imagination run wild - but I’ve been thinking about what filmmakers choose to put on the screen when they choose not to show the events of the tale. Mostly you sit with your characters all listening to this story, but who do you show and when? Or do you show something else? You can use the story to reflect thematically on the content of the scene, or you can contrast it to the setting - a vulgar tale at a cocktail party. Or maybe you want a story being told while a couple plays footsy under the seat. But if you’re just going to sit with the story, choosing who’s reaction to show when and when to just stick on the storyteller is an interesting thing.

Short Term 12, for example, does this cool thing with this. The movie opens on this guy who works at Short Term 12 telling a piece of the place’s old mythology to a new coworker. They’re not doing anything particularly special with the cuts, but right at the climax of the story, some kid breaks out of a door behind them and runs screaming across the lawn. The experienced employees in the group listening to this story drop everything and run after the kid, tackle him, let him kick and scream and then cool down. Then, when everything seems fine, the storyteller picks right up where he left off. The story is used to show how mundane this crazy event is in this place. It contrasts to the events at hand which tells us a lot, and meanwhile the content of the story is both entertaining and full of necessary exposition while also being justified in the telling so that we don’t feel like we’re being force-fed information. Great use of a character telling a story without cutting away to the content of that story.

Something about characters telling stories within the contents of another story is both very appealing to me (I love stories and will always take on more!) and tough to pull off. You can’t just spend 2-3 minutes on some character telling a story that doesn’t relate to the main plot at hand without having a damn good reason, so I admire it when it’s done well.

That feels like enough rambling for now. To close out, here’s a bunch of movies I’ve seen recently.

The Spectacular Now - this thing is the best thing I’ve seen recently. Coming of age story with a pretty lackluster plot carried on the shoulders of stunning acting. Go see it.

Short Term 12 - as discussed, I recommend this look into a world I’ve otherwise no experience with.

Elysium - this movie made me actively angry at how bad it was. It took this amazing sci-fi premise and completely squandered it on flat characters and people exploding into muck.

World’s End - right up there with Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Very savvy, very funny.

The Way Way Back - Serious Steve Carell and silly Sam Rockwell both make me happy. A few too many “my high school summer coming of age movie” tropes to be above and beyond just “another very good movie”, though I did find an interpretation of the movie that made me accept and embrace those tropes…

In A World - funny actors being funny people. Full of comedic performances instead of zingers - just the way I like my comedy. I’m not quite sure what that Rob Corddry / Michaela Watkins plotline was doing in this movie, but it wasn’t bad, just out of place.

Good stuff, people. Cinema is not dead. It’s only getting better.

(UPSTREAM COLOR)

Sam out.

Red Dog

The words are coming out of my head too fast, so I'll make this quick: I'm interning at the Sedona International Film Festival. As an intern / volunteer I get to go to two free screenings a night during this week before the festival starts. Tonight's included Red Dog.

PLOT SYNOPSIS:  family friendly G rated thing. Main character is a dog - Red Dog. He's the dog that belongs to a community of miners in the Australian outback in the 70s. They all love him. Story is set up as a viewer stand-in character shows up at this mining camp one night while Red Dog is sick in the back. Everyone from his life is standing around worrying and reminiscing. Basically each character gets one story with the dog.

Then there's this one guy who's the former master of the dog, the only master the dog every had. His name is John, and he's the only American, and he rides a motorcycle. He hasn't stayed in any one place for more than 2 years at a time.

Alright, let's pause there. We got an American rider who's always on the move and is the only one able to tame the dog AKA the obvious symbol for the natural world out there. What we've got here folks is a cowboy. His name

So John the cowboy (his name is JOHN, and they never tell you his last name. But I have an idea) falls in with this group of miners and eventually settles down with this gorgeous blonde girl. Two years and a day after coming here, he proposes to her, she accepts, and they go bang. Then the next morning he dies in a motorcycle accident. Very sad, lots of tears, and the little shopgirls mourn the loss of the ideal cowboy... but enough Kracauer.

Alright, so status report - the cowboy is dead. Did I mention that the last thing he did was tell Red Dog to stay and wait for him? Yeah. So the dog waits for him to return for three weeks, then decides (accompanied by very dramatic narration) that he's gonna go find John. He searches all up and down the continent, even hitching a ride over to Japan at one point.

After a few years, Red Dog comes home, befriends Red Cat (you can't make this shit up), and then we get back to the present day.

OKAY. So since the dog has become a symbol for all of us by this point, what we end up with is all of us as a culture and all of nature (because the dog still came from the untamed wilds by just showing up one day) searching desperately for the ideal cowboy so we can bring him home.

Guys. We're just trying to relive the glory days of our culture. We want to go back to the hero of the old west, but we can't! He's dead. But we just keep on searching, man. Keep on searching for that ideal that we've lost in our past.

But we remember him. We miss him and love him, so much so that when it comes time for Red Dog to die, he walks over to the grave of his former master and lies down there to die by his side, and we all go there with him. And then we replace Red Dog with a new dog and try as hard as we can to replicate what we had before. The viewer stand-in marries John's ex-fiance, because it's as close as we can come to him.

BUT IT'S JUST A POOR FACSIMILE. HE'S GONE, DEAD. STOP TRYING TO GO BACK, GUYS.

WE HAVE TO LOOK TO THE FUTURE. THAT'S WHERE THE WESTERNS ARE NOW. IN SCI-FI.

FUCK.

Maybe any of that made sense. Probably not.

SAM OUT