Dominic Balasuriya

“Elysium” would be just another summer blockbuster, if not for the fact that its director, Neill Blomkamp, was also responsible for a very different film: “District 9”. Sure, both films feature near-future dystopias, complete with gritty violence. But “Elysium” is missing much of what made “District 9” such an effective piece of science-fiction.

It was, I admit, a little surprising.^{Even The New Yorker’s reviewer seemed ebullient, calling the film “something angry and alive” amongst this summer’s other blockbusters.} “Elysium” was made with a budget almost three times larger than “District 9”: on the face of things, surely we should expect a much bigger film? Yet somehow, “Elysium” feels a great deal smaller in ambition.

Things start to make sense once you realise the kind of film Blomkamp was setting out to make. Tellingly, in an interview with Boing Boing reporter Colin Berry, Blomkamp revealed that:

“My whole goal was big-scale cinema and archetypal storytelling. It will probably be the most expensive film I’ll ever make… But to have a bunch of low-budget, super edgy films and not have something cinematic? I wouldn’t be happy not to have that in my body of work. Elysium really is the film I wanted to make.”

Spoilers Begin Here

The real issue is that what passes for “cinematic” today is mostly flash, not substance; with good-looking CG and action often used to paper over other shortcomings.

For instance: it seems that the plot of a blockbuster doesn’t always need to make perfect sense. At the start of the film, we see gang-leader Spider sending rogue shuttles up to Elysium^{The eponymous space-station that serves as a luxurious paradise for the very rich, with universal healthcare for all.}. These people are risking a lot^{Just a single shuttle makes it, and the hundreds of people in the other shuttles perish when they’re hit by missiles.}, but when they get there, they don’t seem to have any kind of plan for dealing with Elysium’s security forces. Just one mother has the right idea: she manages to get access to a med-bay to heal her daughter, before both are deported. For the rest, it just seems like a bizarre suicide mission.

But a more egregious breach happens at the end of the film: hundreds of medical ships pour out of Elysium, going down to fix things up on the previously-neglected Earth. It’s definitely a feel-good moment, but as you start to think about it, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Why would Elysium have all those ships just standing idly by? After all, every home on Elysium already has a med-bay.

Plot shortcomings could be dismissed, if “Elysium” was filled with characters we cared about. But with paper-thin heroes and villains, it’s hard to engage with what we’re seeing. The relationship between protagonists Max and Frey largely rests on a few frames of flashback to their childhood in an orphanage. Playing a power-hungry defence minister, Jodie Foster is largely wasted: her motivations beyond simply wanting to seize control are never explored. And Sharlto Copley, who played the fascinatingly ambiguous Wikus van de Merwe in “District 9”, is reduced here to the one-dimensionally aggressive Kruger.

It’s a real shame, then, that “Elysium” doesn’t live up to its potential. Blomkamp’s next film is set to come out in 2015 : entitled “Chappie”, it’s about an AI robot who’s stolen by gangsters. An intriguing premise, to be sure, but everything depends on whether Blomkamp decides to return to the engaging characters and strong storytelling that made “District 9” such an effective film.

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Time magazine, reporting from the Venice Film Festival:

“Miyazaki has decided that ‘The Wind Rises’ will be his last film, and he will now retire,” Koji Hoshino, who runs the director’s Studio Ghibli, announced.

What will Studio Ghibli look like without Hayao Miyazaki? At 72, he’s retiring from a studio he founded in 1985, after the success of animated classic “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”. Since then, he’s directed nine of the studio’s feature films, including the Academy-award winning “Spirited Away”^{Ghibli films have enjoyed enormous financial success in Japan: “Spirited Away”, for example, overtook “Titanic” to become the highest grossing film in Japanese history.}. It’s fair to say that Miyazaki is synonymous with Ghibli: he’s had a hand in almost every film, even those that he didn’t direct.

With his retirement, Studio Ghibli will surely have to change. For the short term, things will go on as usual: another film is slated for release in 2013, directed by Isao Takahata, the other director most strongly associated with Ghibli films. But at 77, Takahata is older even than Miyazaki , and it seems plausible that he too might retire in the near future.

That leaves Gorō Miyazaki. The older Miyazaki son, Gorō was initially reluctant to follow his famous father into animation, spending several years in landscape design. But in 2006, after several years as director of the Ghibli Museum, Gorō was asked to direct his first picture, “Tales from Earthsea”. Rumor has it that his father was initially unhappy about this decision, but upon seeing the finished film, felt that Gorō had proved himself. Reviews were mixed, but the film still had Ghibli’s trademark brand of fantasy.

Gorō’s sophomore picture, “From Up On Poppy Hill”, was very different. Set in post-Korean War Japan, the animation, of course, was breathtaking. But the film told a high-school love story with a much smaller scale than any of Ghibli’s fantasy epics, and yet without the sweetness of “My Neighbour Totoro” or “Kiki’s Delivery Service” ^{Roger Ebert’s review of “Poppy Hill” begins: “This was a day I didn’t see coming. The latest film from Japan’s Studio Ghibli, which sets the world standard for animation, is a disappointment.”}

It’s also worth noting that so far, Gorō has focused only on adapting existing stories^{“Tales from Earthsea” was very loosely based on Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea” fantasy series, and “Poppy Hill” was based on a manga series of the same name.}. Indeed, every Ghibli film of the last ten years has either been directed by Hayao Miyazaki, or adapted from an existing book. Nothing wrong with adaptations, of course, but some of Ghibli’s best films have been Miyazaki’s original creations.

But an uneven beginning is not necessarily a bad thing — his father spent almost 25 years working in animation before he directed his first successful feature — Gorō still has time to catch up. The elder Miyazaki is expected to speak about his retirement from Tokyo later in the week, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he continues to be involved in film-making in some capacity. And with Studio Ghibli founder Toshio Suzuki staying on as producer, there’s no reason why they can’t keep making excellent films.

Wherever Studio Ghibli goes next, the films of Hayao Miyazaki will long be remembered in cinema history. It will be at least a few months before “The Wind Rises” is released to international audiences, but early reviews suggest it will certainly be a fitting capstone for a long and illustrious career.