Sound vaguely familiar? That’s because the South Africa-born filmmaker once
again goes for bold (if blunt) political parable, substituting a polluted,
overpopulated, and largely Latino Los Angeles for the racially-charged Johannesburg
of his previous film. Blomkamp came out of nowhere with 2009’s District 9, an action movie with an
acute social consciousness that only thinly disguised its apartheid allegory in
crustacean alien guise. An unexpected critical and commercial triumph and a low-budget aesthetic achievement, the visionary
film did a lot with a little, the striking production design, cinematography,
costuming, and effects seemingly, against all odds, willed into being by its
young creator—Blomkamp was not yet thirty when shooting District 9, and working
with a budget of fewer millions than he had years.
Four years have passed, and the director makes a poised entrance into
mainstream popcorn cinema. Although the sets are grander and the stars more
famous, Blomkamp maintains much of the grit and grime, intensity and ingenuity
of District 9.Working with a larger
canvas and a more conventional framework, his Elysium plays like a cross between its smaller, scrappier, and
often more searing predecessor and a big-budgeted, little-minded blockbuster.
