The Internship (2013)

Just a quick one. The Internship, or Wedding Crashers 2, is quite clearly a massive 90 minute advert for Google with the chirpy/pseudo-serious double-act of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as vaunted groupies.

And it is Wedding Crashers pretty much: precisely the same chemistry is transferred almost a decade later - including, of course, a Will Ferrell cameo. The chemistry is still kind of present in their underdog story, so in the most numbsculling, mindmelting way, this isn't actually a complete waste of time (also I've always had a soft spot for Wilson's charming Texan drawl) - you just have to watch something from McQueen or Von Trier or Haneke or someone else either side to redress the intellectual equilibrium.

It's not as if writers Vaughn and Shawn Levy haven't attempted to sneak to genuine social commentary in either. When Vaughn and Wilson are down in the dumps are being made redundant from their simple salesman jobs (sacked by John Goodman no less) they wistfully denounce the 'college dream' their generation had been sold by the governmental suits: get a degree and you WILL have a comfortable, monied life. I'm not from that generation but that idea seems like it probably rings true. Then a bit later on when they make friends with younger interns they find the 20 year old kids cynical and realistic: the college dream has burst, they aren't enough jobs, life is hard - this is something I can relate to. Those are prescient social observations in a society long ravaged by post-modern cynicism, resigned to the fact that their fates will be decided by outside factors. It's clumsily introduced but Vaughn and Levy TRIED.

For synopsis, see Wedding Crashers. And the antagonist is English of course. Talk about reversion to standard American heart-warming comedy characteristics. There are actually a couple of genuinely laughable scenes and the ending is so corny one can't help but smile languidly, relinquished from the cares of the world, minds thrust back into the cosy folds of high school/university nostalgia. Not quite The Internshit then.

Steve McQueen Part One: Hunger (2008)

Swing down around here for a Steve McQueen encounter, his first entry into the canon of cinematic history and it's a stormer. POWER. Power-FUL. It's so powerful and angsty and raw and photographically gripping. I could describe all the wizard techniques McQueen and his cinematographer Sean Bobbitt get up to, lay-out all their tricks and sneakiness on a plain (or some other flat surface) but that would gravely transcend and remove the essence of Hunger. How they do it is not necessary. All that is necessary is the power and the effect the image-viscerality has on me, or you. They zealously infect every frame with copious dollops of grey sadness. And this is McQueen's debut (for which he received some prize by the jury at Cannes).

McQueen, as writer (alongside Enda Walsh), introduces us to three primary characters whose respective lives revolve around a prison full of 'political terrorists' in Troubled Northern Ireland, 1981. First we meet the morose silence of prison guard Raymond (Stuart Graham). He lives daily under the clouded spectre of imminent death; he's a man coming to the end of his psychological tether, wracked by fear and guilt, unable to connect with his colleagues, torn asunder by the brittle realities that govern his meagre existence: his guilt-flecked knuckles, bloodied by the physical abuse he's obliged to dole out to inmates. In a twist of power structure irony though, the forlorn existentialism - borne out of crippling self-disgust - are not experiences shared by those battered inmates.

They are the metaphorically (and spiritually) liberated few; not economically coerced to perform unhumanly acts by authorities from above, but free and able to chase their own socio-political ideals; safe and sound in the warm bosom of faith, of sincerely believing in their rightness and knowing that in the end they will prevail. And so whilst inhabiting that mental haven, they recklessly abandon their physical bodies to all manner of unspeakable filth. All bodily sacrifices are made. The second character is a new inductee into the prison and another who engages in the deprecating non-prison uniform protest (the uniform being a visual submission to an authority they consider evil and alien). He (Brian Milligan) and his cell-mate (Liam McMahon) perform every protest imaginable.

Figs of humour do spring eternal though, however fleeting: during the family meet times there are subtle parlances aplenty, conducted all clandestine-like with trinkets and radios stuffed up vaginas, messages relayed via the warm garment folds of babies etc. Here in the background we are introduced to Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the republican willing to travel any lengths to see the personal freedoms of his people realised. Despite the emasculation symbology infused with the cutting of his hair and a violently uncomfortable rectal inspection, he ploughs on his impossible furrow nonetheless. Disregarding all who attempt to sway him otherwise. Even his ally/friend Father Dominic (played by the ebullient Liam Cunningham, better known as Davos Seaworth) cannot deter or redirect his self-destructive energies away from a planned hunger strike. 

Their interview is the centrepiece to Hunger. It's 16 and a half minutes of solid, quick-fire, impassioned dialogue from one singular dispassionate Kubrickian angle, adjacent from Sands and the Father, placed equally between each. Tip the hat, bend the knee nothing but praise can be directed towards Fassbender and Cunningham for the multitudes of their talent: they managed to sustain the requisite level of intensity for a remarkably long period of pure acting time (not to mention being able to remember the lines and pauses [okay so I guess it could have been a bit improvised but if that was the case it makes it all the more impressive]). Hereon in we're left to feast on the sumptuous photographic delights of Sands' protracted hunger strike. And it's gruesome. Hideous closeups are alternated with woozy trauma-inducing camera work as he gradually loses his grip on contemporary time and space; his mind devolves back to a day that he perceived to be his golden period, an afternoon he once spent as a boy in rural Ireland running cross-countryside.

Hunger is so powerful, so formidable a viewing it's impossible for any viewer to remain aloof from any of the themes that run prevalent through its hour-and-a-half runtime - and I haven't even touched on the religious aspects (a pretty fundamental feature of The Troubles admittedly but not, I don't think, a central part of this film). McQueen pushed many intangible filmmaking boundaries here, breaking moulds and conventions then inventing new ones. He plays with traditional chronologies of plotlines and arbitrary factors that transcend cinema ('time') then dismisses them all in favour of something more elusive: visual style, with raw human substance.

Wounds Of Waziristan (2013)

This is a link to Madiha Tahir's latestdocumentary. It examines the fallout from the lengthy (and supposedly ending) drone strikes that Bush, Obama and the US have been carrying out over the Waziristan region of western Pakistan; makes for horrible viewing. Tahir brutally reveals the lies of those central administrations and their 'just' reasons for the murder of innocent civilians; not even that they die or that their family structures have been decimated by grief, but the psychological stresses that constant fear inevitably impresses on people. The US have exploited the fact that there are no official codes of law in that region, in much the way as the British did after the First World War.

The story is built on the harrowing interviews that Tahir conducts with the victims and journalists who have lived under the yoke of drone terror. And it is heartbreaking. Interspersed between these scenes are excerpts from a presidential address given by Obama. It's an evocative technique, designed to condemn the president and his policy even more; it’s one that is regularly applied in whistleblowing documentaries such as these as a way to show how flagrantly bullshit the official line is.

Of course Wounds Of Waziristan is only 25 minutes long: its potent and effective at such a short time, but nonetheless it's a shame that wasn't an hour or of feature length.

Blackfish (2013)

Must admit I started watching this thinking it would be one of those crap disaster-monster movies about a killer whale ravaging the inhabitants of some town off the east coast of America. I was wrong. What I saw instead was quite a one-sided though thoroughly absorbing 80 minute documentary about the horrors and moral pitfalls of the confinement of killer whales and the fatal results.

Orcinus Orca, to give killer whales their Latin moniker, are dangerous. Blackfish gives example after example of this. And yet they are not the targets of Gabriela Cowperthwaite's surprisingly fascinating documentary: it's the suits, specifically SeaWorld, with vested interests in the inhumane capture and psychologically debilitating captivity of a naturally wild mammalfish (not the technical term perhaps). All for lucrative financial gain of course.

SeaWorld, like all such companies, seem to be pretty disgusting and prone to misrepresenting inconvenient truths. There's no attempt to analyse the happenings from their point of view - and they refused to contribute any counter-argument to the picture, though they did offer a defensive statement retrospective of Blackfish's appearance at the Sundance festival earlier this year - but it remains difficult to sympathise with SeaWorld. They are in utter ambivalence to the mental health of the whales (there is a detailed segment featuring scientists and orca-experts explaining the significant emotional capabilities of the animals, rendering them intelligent enough to be psychologically damaged and altered by the torturous conditions they live in) or the trainers, who have largely been left in ignorance of the dangers they face when working with their charges. That the whale shows continue much as before - despite a court case - with only slight changes to trainer safety precautions is the most disturbing aspect of all; indeed, the infamous triple human-killer killer whale Tilikum is actually still giving performances, which is extraordinary.

Cowperthwaite interviews neglected employees as well as a remorseful old whale hunter, all of which are moving and emotional and tear inducing; she manipulates the audience in a superb way, encouraging even those who don't usually think much about abuses to animals (like me) to brandish an animal rights sign. It's a true documentary, expertly compiled and edited with music drenched in emotional significance to evoke in the audience the rage that clearly compelled Cowperthwaite to make Blackfish.

There's a quote towards the end: (paraphrasing) "in fifty years time we'll look back at these happenings and think them barbaric". There's a nice resonance in there that rings true somehow. One wonders how long this practice at SeaWorld will continue. With directors like Cowperthwaite shedding light on yet further examples of murky corporational workings, probably not very long - lobby and protest groups are massing and mobilising in opposition.

Adventures In The Sin Bin (2012)

Awful awful awful awful. Romantic high school comedy has long had its day and should die.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Gus Van Sant is one idiosyncratic gentleman. Overtly artistically and untediously belligerent, he sees and creates stories that juxtapose abrupt violence with oblique emotional warmth and sincere humour. Van Sant, who went to school with David Byrne, is a true renaissance man - he directs, writes, paints, plays music, photographs, winks, twerks and nods according to trusty old wikipedia. In that vein My Own Private Idaho, his third directorial accreditation, is a demonstration of his ability to juggle multiple strands and ideas yet still finish with a coherent final picture.

As an independent film My Own Private Idaho could be pretty free with its controversial content, able to say and paint the visual pictures that a mainstream studio film couldn't, yet it struggled to pick up funding for production. The controversy surrounds the rent boy homelessness of narcoleptic Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves). Perhaps controversy arose because of the film's matter-of-fact treatment male prostitution: the reasons for their lowly predicament are not the subject of the film and are left unexamined because this isn't some social analysis of American society but a story about relationships and existentionalism. Their 'profession' is not a central plot feature, just a kind of mental starting point for the story to progress from. Though most sex scenes are implied there are two that appear out of necessity, and they ingeniously portrayed: instead of movement Van Sant appears to draw from his photographic background and puts his copulating characters in significantly sexual still life positions... sure I've seen it somewhere else, but can't remember where.

The writing is fragile and delicate and oscillates wildly between the two central characters; it can be separated into four distinctive acts. One, the lives of the boys specifically Mike and his stressful narcolepsy (often sleeping through difficult or socially awkward scenarios); two, with the arrival of Bob Pigeon (William Richert) as the Falstaff figure My Own Private Idaho transforms into a contemporary homage to Shakespeare's Henry IV: Part One, with Scott (who comes from a rich background) as Prince Hal, the character who indulges in moral depravity but whom plans a spectacular redemption to emphasis his dramatic transformation - it also re-enacts one of the more famous scenes from that play, the robbery - with Scott taking the central lead role; the third act features both Mike and Scott equally as the movie becomes a self-discovery travel drama, an attempt to find Mike's mother a trail that leads them to Italy and back (to Portland); finally, we see Scott's redemption and Mike's further descent into depression and psychosis.

That was a long and perhaps confusing sentence (147 words). Mike ends up in his place of existential wilderness (from which the movie opens up with as well) talking to himself; he has lived and is living a difficult under-privileged life full of knock-downs and bad luck. Upon falling into another narcoleptic stupor he is robbed of his belongings and shoes; but then a figure comes along and picks him up: is it another horny customer in search of purchased debauchery? Or is it Scott retrieving his best friend from the metaphorical ditch?

I - as are many others - am slightly in love with Phoenix. Like other figures who die before their time - Keats, Duncan Edwards - or at the peak of their powers - Cobain, Hendrix, Morrison - there's a romance about the premature death of great individuals. River Phoenix sits alongside those individuals because he was/is a great actor blessed with an extraordinarily nuanced talent - the campsite scene is a fine example of that. He had the delicacy and touch of a master. My Own Private Idaho is arguably his greatest film and so we, the retrospective audience who know how shortly his life would continue, have learnt to appreciate it even more.

My Own Private Idaho is aided by the presence of Phoenix who has left a ghostly cult-like impression on all of the films he worked on in his short-lived career. Nonetheless it remains a genius indie movie full of surreal metaphorical images and Udo Kier in his customary American role as 'strange European'.

The Pledge + Encounters At The End Of The World (2007)

Rather than sustain this blog ad hoc I've decided, abruptly and right this very minute, to make a pledge and write a film review every single day. This might probably a foolish promise to make busy because I'm pretty busy - studying and that - and failure is likely; nonetheless it's a good habit to get into if one wants to get into writing. Besides even if I fail there's no one really reading this blog anyway... so I'll only be a failure in mine own eyes. There won't be any particular chronology or reason for movie selections, they will be chosen arbitrarily. Also due to varying availability of time the length of reviews will no doubt probably fluctuate significantly.

With that in mind I shall begin with the Werner Herzog documentary Encounters At The End Of The World. Herzog is invited by the Council of Scientists (or something) to film the McMurdo American Research Facility Unit, how they live, how they entertain themselves in the tundra deserts of Antarctica. And it's beautiful, truly beautiful and moving on so many levels - zoologically, anthropologically, naturally, landscapes. It's an auteur work with Herzogian gravitas stamped throughout - perhaps more apparent than usual because, with his wizened German delivery, he narrates the whole way through.

He focusses on the people and their work, following them like a spectre ghosting in and out of their jovial, weather-beaten faces. This is a unique society, comprised of individuals who have built their lives on travel and scientific exploration; these are a people who have fascinating, sometimes frightening, stories to tell; a group whom fate has seen fit to throw together, to build an isolated culture of social expediency and relativist humour. But Herzog is careful not to depict McMurdo as a Utopia - as he says himself, this isn't a place where humans and 'the fluffy penguins live in perfect harmony'. Its an ugly almost industrial place of work in tough environmental surroundings. Indeed though McMurdo may be free of many of the aesthetic frivolities of their western homes - no such things as 'fashion', or meticulous self-grooming, cultural knowledge - it's still a slave to some of the stultifying bureaucracy of the mainlands, like health and safety.

Although Herzog switches between face to face interviews and that fly-on-the-wall documentarial style, there is a greater ontological message of what it means for humanity to inhabit the Earth. The message is that, ultimately, no matter what mankind can build with its technologies and clever thoughts they (we) will be defeated by the relentless cycle of mature and evolution: a crashed helicopter submerged in snow drifts is cited as the symbol of that futility. This underlying message is not as nihilistic as one might think though. It inspires us to acknowledge and recognise the flawless beauty of the world whilst we have the opportunity. This message is often couched in idiosyncratic metaphors but Herzog's implications are made clearer by his extended use of underwater film photography, showcasing the unorthodox yet exquisite bounties of nature: fish, crustaceans, penguins, seals, volcanoes, and of course people. The issue of climate change is the subtle everpresent, though it's rarely mentioned in overt terms. Encounters seems to act as a kind of lament that climate change has been pushed out of the intellectual court and into the stagnant arena of politics, where it stews and simmers in those endless bureaucracies. But this is no tree-hugging (whale-hugging) propaganda film - indeed at one point Herzog questions why so much cultural effort should be expended on the curation of animal life and almost none on the maintenance of dying human languages and customs.

Present throughout Encounters' is the glorious soundtrack. Particularly noticeable on the underwater sequences beneath the ceilings of ice, the music is a voluptuous juxtaposition of awe-infusing choral (that's 'choral' not 'coral', and no pun was intended) and the emotionally resonant atonal screechings of modernist composers. In truth the music renders those underwater scenes the most memorable sequences in the film, an opinion which should not (and does not) slight the anthropological conclusions that Herzog draws elsewhere.

The legend of Werner Herzog can turn his elder hand to any format of film and make it visually spectacular and morally intriguing.

This Is The End (2013)

This Is The End is silly and stupid. But then that's obviously the point. Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, James Franco among many others (including cameos from Emma Watson and Rihanna and Jason Segel) play themselves during the apocalypse. Self-referential and self-deprecating humour is occasionally used in a funny way  - particularly the coke-addled Michael Cera scenes - but the entire religious/Satanic aspect is ridiculous to the point of suicidal tedium. Obviously these are just a few lines. To be honest I don't think its worth more than that. And I'm usually a sucker for post-modern approaches to cinema.

Seriously though those Michael Cera bits are brilliant; they're just all in the first 25 minutes. Just watch the first 25 minutes.

Armadillo

Yes it's another Afghanistan related post but this one is quite considerably different to Taxi To The Dark Side. It is another documentary but only in the loosest possible sense; truly this is the most cinematic documentary I have ever seen.

Danish filmmaker Janus Metz follows a squad's 6 month tour of Afghanistan. By focussing on a couple of characters, particularly the slightly aloof and thoughtful (though painfully reticent) Mads, Metz condenses that long period into an hour and forty minutes. This might sound reductive (in literal terms I suppose it is) but the raw emotion and boredom feel remarkably immediate and genuine. Metz captures the full spectrum of the Middle Eastern war experience: from the copious amounts of waiting, focussing on their down-time pursuits - pornography and baking - and the camaraderie that naturally ensues in such a hostile environment; to the high adrenaline buzz-saw dramatics of conflict against hidden Taliban adversaries. 

These experiences are all sublimely smeared in melodramatic visual photography and thoughtful use of sound. Often the natural score is replaced by one written by Uno Helmersson's score, which weaves in and out at tense moments. It's a superior score, sonically unnerving and adept at sustaining dramatic poise. Of course the high-quality production element is the chief criticism put forward by Armadillo's detractors: just how authentic is it? Was chronology affected in the editing process? If so, to what extent - were events deliberately manipulated to provide a gripping action sequence? These are all pertinent questions, but perhaps miss the underlying point the film is attempting to convey. The war there is futile. When faced with fighting an enemy that can disappear into the local community there is no way of winning. Metz captures this frustration amongst the men several times over. One is reminded of the excellent documentary on Vice with the English journalist Ben Anderson (both part one and part two, and look up Anderson's This Is What Winning Looks Like, another documentary that is breathtakingly incisive and relevant).

Naturally this film received a lot of attention in Metz's native Denmark. Anger was roused by the scene that depicted some dead and bloodied Taliban bodies in a ditch and the soldiers dancing round all smiles and languour. It was always going to be a controversial sticking point for the trigger-happy perpetually unhappy bourgeois crowd, who immediately filed complaint and outrage in the Danish media both against Metz and the soldiers themselves. But all that Metz was seemed to be doing though was to portray the harsh realities of a war. More nuanced than that even. The men in Afghanistan are trying desperately to fight an impossible conflict against a guerrilla enemy - whom, Anderson shows in one of the videos above, the soldiers rarely even catch a glimpse of - and to have killed five straight off the bat in a really intimate combat situation... I can completely empathise with their glee at survival, not only that but a confirmed kill in what must surely be an incredibly exhilarating experience. To paraphrase the soldiers at the end - 'you weren't there'. How could we, a faraway public, condemn the actions of those involved in a fatal firefight, especially in such a brief situation. There is no way of retrospectively moralising such a sequence of events when not in the immediate geographical vicinity. In that sense I am an apologist. And anyway a charge of - to paraphrase Apocalypse Now - war crime in the context of a bloody conflict is insane.

As a final note, I've no idea how Metz and his camera were allowed to get so close to the action. Brave man. Also 'Armadillo' is the Forward Operating Base from which the regiment are based. If nothing else the DVD cover (above) is way cool: a grenade transposed into a heart.

Taxi To The Dark Side

Taxi To The Dark Side is an Alex Gibney documentary film released in 2007 about the culture of torture in the US military, with the death of a young, innocent Afghan taxi driver - Dilawar - in a prison in Bagram as the launching pad. It critically examines the grassroots interpretation of that wildly ambiguous term, the 'War on Terror'. Actually Taxi To The Dark Side is considerably more nuanced than that inadequate description gives credence to. It doesn't just name and shame the minor players in various torture scandals but follows the rabbit hole all the way up to the highest echelons, continually questioning the humanity and morality of an administration and military that risibly looked to ignore or quash any suggestion of torture in American Afghani imprisonment camps. It examines Bagram then Abu Ghraib and then to Guanatanamo Bay, highlighting the vacuum of accountability.

In short, this is a very effective documentary. It's cleverly composed, using the Dilawar case as a rudder with which to steer every line of argument and includes refreshingly frank interviews with a multitude of different characters up and down the spectrum of responsibility. That includes the Military Police and Intelligence Officers who carried out the physical torture. Gibney alters the perception that an audience would have of them; he manages to convincingly portray them as victims of the system that allowed, encouraged even, the implementation of debilitating physical interrogation methods. It's difficult to feel genuine compassion for them (they were all convicted by military tribunals) but it suspends knee-jerk condemnation and contextualises their plight in a wider political atmosphere - an atmosphere that demanded intelligence about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda at all costs. These were nice people who were morally isolated from the outside world, working in a culture that passively encouraged the dehumanising of its Muslim inmates in a manner not unlike the Nazi officers of Jewish concentration camps or the Einsatzgruppen. 

Of course the most controversial bits involve Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and General's McNeil and Miller and their apathetic attitudes towards the endemic contraventions of the Geneva Convention that occurred under their authority. Even more sickening though are the brutal 'interrogation' techniques and the documents signed by those movers and shakers that acquiesced to those methods. Stress positions, sexual humiliation, sleep and sensory deprivation are all described in vivid detail. Interspersed throughout are excerpts from G.W. Bush speeches - there's no doubt that it's a deliberate mechanism designed to shock, to evoke disgust and it bloody works.

Gibney's Taxi To The Dark Side is unpleasantly effective in its shocking portrayal of goes on in the supposedly civilised twenty-first century. It doesn't even end on a positive note - Guantanamo Bay is a continuation of the treatment prevalent in Abu Ghraib because it falls between the judicial cracks of Cuba and America, it's not at the behest of any national law. They can get away with anything they want. Depressing stuff. Not least because Taxi To The Dark Side received high exposure - it won a Best Documentary Oscar - and Gitmo continues to thrive despite vast worldwide outrage. Evidently there's no way of forcing closure through legal channels (Obama has twice promised and twice failed to ensure its termination).

Blue Jasmine

Here's a link to a review I wrote elsewhere for the new Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine, starring Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins and Alec Baldwin. Enjoy.

Elysium

Ok, it's actually been a few weeks since I actually saw Elysium in the cinema and I have been lazy and not written about it until now. But here we are with Neill Blomkamp, Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley. We have an action packed science fiction that concurrently plays on the prescient themes of economic inequality and hero-saves-the-world daring-do. Those are, as I shall discuss, fundamentally contradictory and symbolic of the muddled message at the very heart of the script. There will be spoilers, but then how else can I discuss the meat of the film.

Roughly speaking Damon is a former convict looking to set his life in order working in a factory that builds androids. But he is then the victim of an accident, leaving him with only a few days to live. He must get to Elysium and cure himself with the magic machines they have up there on this distant satellite. Meanwhile Jodie Foster is desperate to preserve her beautiful privileged home from the dirty vermin smouldering on Earth. The wildcard Agent Kruger (Copley) is the baddy who tried to kill everyone.

It's a moderately pleasing picture with brilliantly realised VFX (as one would expect for a big budget) and photographically engrossing combat scenes. Matt Damon is Mr.Consistency once more as the ailing central character Max Da Costa desperately in need of medical salvation from a near-fatal nuclear exposure, who bumps his childhood sweetheart Frey Santiago (Alice Braga) and her sickly daughter; Copley is sufficiently creepy to play the villain Kruger and that irrepressible South African accent is superb the whole way through; and Foster is as sternly matriarchal and ruthless as she needed to be for her role as Delacourt, the Secretary of Defence charged with defending the privileged satellite world of Elysium. 

As for the politics - and one could hardly argue this is not a political film considering the flagrant subject matter of wealth disparity - things are less convincing. I'm not sure how deep and serious Blomkamp's socio-political convictions were for Elysium but the general message has been tragically garbled in favour of superficial plot twists. The concept of a literal partition (i.e. space) between rich and poor is potentially thought-provoking. It is an exaggerated and partisan view of a future society, completely eliminating the bourgeoisie (something Marx would have taken issue with), but nonetheless interesting. Exaggeration is absolutely fine if it is deliberately employed to make a greater, overarching observation about the imbalance of monetary distribution in the modern world. But it wasn't. It was just a cool way of making Da Costa have to fight the evil guys with cool futuristic weapons in a standard quest storyline.

To question Elysium further we would have to examine the motives behind each of the main characters and understand why it is they want to reach Elysium. Max Da Costa wants to heal himself on one of Elysium's wizard medical capsules; Frey Santiago wants to heal her daughter from leukaemia; Kruger wants to supplant the Elysium government and rule as an autonomous figure in luxury. In short, all central characters have no concept of a greater liberation of mankind from the suppression of the rich, but strive forwards with selfish goals in mind. That there is an eventual emancipation of the underprivileged is tacked on at the end as a way of justifying the selfish ambitions that had driven Da Costa and Santiago thus far. When we remember that the wealthy citizens of Elysium don't even turn out to be the bad guys the message becomes ever more confused. Delacourt and the other misguided few are rendered just as victimised as their social underlings by Kruger's callous opportunism. Blomkamp really missed a chance to make some seriously relevant social statements pertaining to the prevalent economic inequality of our world. Elysium's political message is frighteningly flippant - a once pure message has been strangled by the desire to make a good story. 

Should I forget political morality and just take the movie at face value? Possibly... but no. Cinema is the perfect platform for debates about the global problems of our modern society. It's strange that a deficiency in care and thought was allowed to pass considering the liberal centre left leanings of those who work in cinema and the arts (obviously, I'm talking about the creative types not the corporate suits). Alas, the fundamentals of Elysium will forever remain unresolved. Visually it's great though, and the world on Elysium is gorgeously idyllic.