With District 9, Neill Blomkamp created a not so subtle allegory to apartheid. With Elyseum he hits us over the head with a story about immigration reform. As expected, it is a one sided story. All the rich are evil, very selfish and almost entirely Caucasian. The poor, although not depicted as entirely decent, are still shown to be caring of others and a majority of them appear to be Latino.
In a distant future, the Earth has become over populated. The wealthy have all moved off planet onto a huge satellite that seems to be one entirely wealthy suburb. Each mansion, they all live in one, contains a bed that can cure any disease or ailment. They speak English and French on Elysium. Why not?
On Earth remain all of the poor who live in conditions only currently found in third world countries. The story takes place in Los Angeles, although no L.A. landmarks are ever shown. Here Max and Frey grew up as orphans speaking Spanish. Now grown, Max and Frey reconnect after their lives took very different turns. Max is an ex-con who now works at a droid factory while Frey is a single mother working as a nurse at a local hospital.
After an accident at the factory that exposes him to radiation, Max is given five days to live. Of course the rich owner does not care, authorizing Max some pain killers to help him endure his last few days. Max decides to meet up with an old criminal friend named Spider who, for a price, smuggles people onto Elysium.
An early scene shows how this is done. Spider imprints fake identification onto the illegals arms, so the computers on Elysium will recognize them as citizens. The healing beds do not work on those without citizenship. They then board a ship that takes off and lands onto someone’s meticulous lawn. One woman is shown running from the ship as droid soldiers collect the other illegals. She breaks into a mansion and puts her sick daughter onto a bed to be cured.
To pay for the ride Max must first help Spider steal some information from Max’s boss. Spider wants access codes and passwords but Max finds he has information much more important. His boss and Elysium’s defense secretary are planning a coup. That information and more gets stuck in Max’s head and suddenly he is a very wanted man.
With some chase scenes and fighting, this film could be billed as an action film. In truth it is merely a political analogy. The action is a distraction, and not a very good one, from Blomkamp’s political message. Frey’s daughter has a disease that can be cured on Elysium, while Spider sees the information in Max’s head as a way to make all of Earth’s population citizens of Elysium. Like I said, it is not very subtle. Blomkamp puts more into the message than he does into any character development, leaving me uncaring of what happens to enyone.
Science fiction can be a great way to reflect on real social/political issues, but Blomkamp is too one sided for me to take any of this seriously. If he wanted to make a real comment on the state of Mexican illegals entering the Unites States for a better life and medical treatment, he needed to address the issue honestly. The United States is going broke because of welfare handouts. If you do not believe me simply look at Detroit, MI which just declared bankruptcy. The United States balks at allowing unlimited illegals because of the cost to the legal citizens that are already here. Blomkamp naively wrote here that the haves are denying the have nots simply to be mean. If Blomkamp wanted to make a comment on current events and have them taken seriously, as he so seems to, he needed to show the issue from more than one side.
