Blomkamp's heavy handed social views fall flat without a relatable protagonist.

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2015)

The overarching problem with the film is how it's shot; I won't condemn the style it's shot in, as many films, "District 9″ and "Cloverfield" among others benefit from the style, but rather the employment of the shaky cam in "Elysium" feels so forced and unnatural, along with excessive, that it strongly detracts from the film. I want to use Spielberg as an example here; In nearly every Spielberg film, order and control are overarching visual themes. He almost always uses a Steadicam, a crane, or a dolly to achieve a smooth, cogent shot. This is important in his films because there's a lot of background action that would be lost if only the foreground were intelligible. One of my favorite examples is in "Jurassic Park." In every scene, including where the crew is running through a herd of dinosaurs, is shot as steady as possible. This was more of a technical issue than aesthetics, but the visual result is quite striking. It was a technical issue because placing dinosaurs into a shaky frame would've been near impossible at the time (1993), but what the Steadicam shots achieved were a thing of beauty; the beauty of the landscape, complete with beautifully rendered dinosaurs, beasts extinct long before our time finally portrayed in a film along with a large depth of field created an immersive experience. A shaky camera in any of these scenes would've highly detracted from the movie because it would defeat the purpose of putting these amazing creatures in an amazing place for the audience to gawk at with open mouths. Now look at "Saving Private Ryan" (1998). By this point in time, Spielberg is already established as an astounding director with a certain visual style. He completely reverses his visual style to meet the film by changing the shutter speed on the camera (something rarely done in film) and going hand-held. "Saving Private Ryan" is a perfect example of a mature filmmaker understanding the needs of the film and adapting his style, if only for one film, to create a larger emotional impact on the audience. The reason I mention this is because it's a shining example of how a director with a certain style changes it to fit the film he's working on. I don't think everyone should shoot their film like Spielberg – that would make for a boring selection of movies.
One of the main goals of "Elysium" is to show how derelict and deformed Earth has become, imploring the audience to show sympathy to the lower class down on earth by juxtaposing beautiful images of the upper class's Elysium. The fundamental problem with this is that the camera is always too shaky to see anything going on in the background. The result is a lack of emotion toward the people of earth. We're told multiple times that Earth is disease ridden and overcrowded, but we never see this. As a viewer, you try to immerse yourself in the film, soaking up dialog and connecting that to the images you've seen. The impact is far diminished if the audience never actually gets a chance to see how horrible the living conditions on earth are. So the final result of all of this is that Blomkamp attempts to provide a social commentary that never gains traction because we literally can't see what he's trying to show us.
I have to compare the film to "District 9," not because I want to, but because the plot of "Elysium" and "District 9″ are incredibly similar, however somewhat reversed. In "District 9″ a man in the upper class is disgusted with how they treat the lower class and decides to fight back. In "Elysium," A man in the lower class is disgusted with how the upper class treats the lower class and decides to fight back. Furthermore, the person fighting back is at first only doing so to save his way of life. After a tech-savvy person and he become friends, the tech savvy person has access to technology that can save his life (turn him back into a human) and they rebel against the upper class, eventually reaching the technology hoarded by the upper class to save the lower class. Of course, in District 9, the lower class is the alien species. There are no differences really in plot. One involves aliens and a spaceship, the other involves humans and a space station. Conveniently enough, the technology to save the lower class rests aboard the space station (Alien Ship) (Elysium). Blomkamp made the same film, used some of the same actors, and tried to invoke sympathy for the same social issues. He even shot both films the same way. The problem is that they're not supposed to be the same film and yet they resemble each other far too closely.
Just as a side note, I found it somewhat funny that the main focus of the film was the medicine that could eradicate disease when that may have been the least of the world's worries. I'm actually surprised that nothing was said about the failing environment. (That would've actually been interesting for Blomkamp to explore) What didn't make sense was that the end goal of the film is to say that if all disease were cured in the world, problem solved. The bigger problem in film was the overcrowding, the crime, the malnourishment, and yes, a polluted environment. How in the world is a death rate of near 0 going to fix the rest of those problems? You've got 5 more years left to live, enjoy being hungry, living in a shack next to 5,000 other people and fending for your life from organized crime. The film focused on all the wrong issues.