'Elysium' -- Elegantly Done Class Warfare, but Not Enough Risks Taken

(This was also written in September, and also was never published.  I'm not sure why, so here it is now)

Spoilers Ahead!

Warnings also for: discussion of sexual harassment, gendered violence, the intersection between race and class

Last weekend I went to see Elysium, starring Matt Damon.  I was hooked on the trailer when I went to see Pacific Rim earlier this summer, and had been pretty excited -- a movie explicitly about class warfare and the proverbial 99% versus the 1%?  I was totally there for that.

And it does deliver -- I won't say that it doesn't; Elysium focuses on the differences between those who live on Earth and those who live on Elysium, specifically with regards to access to health care, with a nod also to the justice system.  It makes itself very clear on where it stands -- preventing the people from accessing basic care because of their poverty is wrong and shouldn't be tolerated.

However, it does some disappointing things with gender and race that I really think should be taken into consideration.  There are three named female characters -- a Latina mother and daughter (played by, respectively, Alice Braga and Emma Tremblay), and an older white woman (played by Jody Foster) who also identifies herself as a mother but mainly acts in the capacity of a villain.  The Latina women spend most of the movie getting victimized or rescued by white men, and the villainous white woman is brutally slaughtered by the most evil white guy in the movie.  To be more general about race, every single white person with a speaking role and a place in the plot does die, and there's only four of them, but I'm a little bit bothered by Matt Damon's role as hero.

He's one of maybe three white people we see, including extras, who originate from poverty-stricken and destroyed Earth, but he is from the very beginning heralded as Hey, You're Gonna Be Important.  And after he winds up with the information that could save everyone on the planet and destabilize the whole power base of Elysium, everyone is after him, either to kill him or convince him to save the Earth.  POC are either practically cameos (in the case of the probably-Indian President Patel) or supporting characters who either die for Matt Damon's character or are saved by his ultimate sacrifice.

I don't know how I feel about that, but I'm pretty sure it's not the best of things that could be had, and I remember spending about half the movie going, 'but why is he white?  there are like no white people here, statistically speaking regarding the visible demographic of this area he should be Latin@.'  

My favorite part of the movie, however, was the end, after Matt Damon Dies To Save Two POC Because He's in Love With One of Them, No Seriously He Can't Give a Fuck About Earth At Large, when Spider -- probably the most important character after Matt Damon's and the mother and daughter I mentioned before, and my favorite in the film -- says to some Elysian officials, after a police drone refuses to arrest him (since it can't arrest Elysian citizens and Damon's sacrifice has rendered everyone on Earth an Elysian citizen), something to the effect of "Guess who owns Elysium now?"  The implicit answer, of course, being the people.

Another good thing about the movie is that Spider uses a cane -- this brings the count of summer blockbusters with mobility-impaired major characters up to two, and puts him in the company of Pacific Rim's Dr. Hermann Gottlieb.  Like in Pacific Rim, the cane is also incidental to his character, providing a reason he would fight so hard to end Elysium's monopoly on high-tech scifi healing devices but never becoming the focus of any part of the film.  It's obviously there, but it never gets a mention in dialogue and his need for it never inhibits him in some cliché, 'oh no, he can't walk without his cane and the villain just snapped it' kind of focus gimmick.

Also, I would have preferred that in writing the movie's ultimate villain, they hadn't gone the cliché and unnecessarily violating route of establishing his eeeeeeevilness by (a) stating he has committed rape in the past, and (b) sexually harassing a woman while he has her held captive and in the presence of her daughter.  There are other ways to code someone as evil without victimizing fictional women yet again, you know?

But overall, I'd give Elysium a 3 out of 4.  It made its points effectively, was well-shot and well-paced with great special effects, but it didn't take quite as many risks as I would have wanted it to, had I been involved in creating it.  Definitely worth the ticket price, though!