Film Friday: Soylent Green (1973)

Tuesday is Soylent Green day... and I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, Soylent Green is a fantastic dystopian film about a world destroyed by overpopulation and pollution. Unlike its contemporaries, it is a shocking, visceral film that can bring real emotion. On the other hand, it’s an unpleasant film to watch with unlikable characters, lousy ideology, and the surprise has long been spoiled.

Plot

Soylent Green takes place in 2022. The world is massively overpopulated. Forty million people crowd into New York City alone, and the film suggests that the East Coast cities at least have grown together into one huge mega city. Overpopulation has caused the world to collapse as people now live in overcrowded dilapidated apartments. The homeless crowd into churches. The government has no control and can’t even begin to stop crime. Making this all the worse, pollution has destroyed the land and food is scarce. Humanity now depends on processed plankton for food. That plankton is processed by the world’s food company, called the Soylent Corporation, which provides Soylent Yellow, Red and now Green to the people through the government. The story takes place against this backdrop.

Charlton Heston is NYPD detective Robert Thorn, a “good” cop. He’s called in to investigate the murder of a rich man named William R. Simonson. Simonson was a director of the Soylent Corporation, but political pressure is soon applied to make Thorn drop the investigation. Thorn refuses to stop and soon learns that before his death, Simonson told something to a priest, which the priest says is “destroying him” – he seems almost delusional by the time Thorn speaks to him. Thorn then gives his friend Sol (Edward G. Robinson) a book he discovered in Thorn’s apartment titled: “Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019.” He wants Sol to examine it. When Sol grasps the conclusion in the book, he decides to end his life, so he goes to a euthanasia center. Thorn races there when he finds out what Sol is doing. He is too late to stop the death, but Sol tells him what he learned and he tells Thorn to get proof and expose this. It is a horrifying moment. Thorn then follows Sol’s body to discover the horrible secret.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

In some ways, this is easily the best of the 1970s dystopian films. Indeed, where this film succeeds and so many of the others fail is in making the overpopulated, overpolluted world feel real. The writer very smartly draws constant references to the details that give you a visceral feeling for what this world is like: a horrible uncomfortable world of absence and want. Society has exhausted its resources, so things like cars (and even buses and trains) are a thing of the past. Food vendors hawk crumbs and broken bits of house wares on the street. The apartments look like slums and seem to have been furnished from garbage dumps. We are constantly reminded of the heat wave, the poisoned air, and the fact that most people have never even seen the foods we take for granted. For example, Heston compares a pair of breasts to a grapefruit, only to be reminded he’s never seen a grapefruit. He needs Sol to taste a spoon to tell him what the little bit of food he’s found on it is – strawberries. He hasn’t had a hot shower in living memory. And when he sees the short film showing the images of the world long gone, e.g. trees, animals, fields, he breaks down and weeps because he wasn’t even able to image what the world had been like.

This is where the film excels, and where you feel the oppressiveness. The government is brutal, murderous and oppressive (though it still wants to pretend to follow procedures) and it has absolute power over all aspects of society. The cops are like Gestapo agents in a way, that they can simply walk into your home and take what they want. Yet, society is also beyond the control of the government. There are too many people to police. There are too many people to control... to protect... to feed. This is a world without freedom or safety or order. It is oppressive in other ways too. There are so many people that life is intolerable. In what is truly a great scene, you see Heston struggle to chase a man who has shot at him, but both are barely moving as they force their way through the crowd. As you watch this scene you feel physically sick knowing this feeling of being caught in a crowd and how confining that can be, and then you realize... that is life in this world every day for these people.

This is a polluted word too where the air is dirty and green, and where a constant heat wave burns your body up. And there is no escape. You can’t go home to escape this because you live in abject poverty, without electricity or water and with almost no food... yet, you need to lock your doors and be careful not to venture out alone because someone will attack you to take the almost-nothing you do own.

Three things make this world completely believable and make you cringe watching it. First, there are constant references to these conditions. This isn’t a film that mentions this and then forgets about it to tell its story. Every single character in every scene makes some reference to the conditions under which they live, and that keeps it constantly on your mind. Secondly, everyone accepts this reality. The government admits that it’s incapable of changing things, the people take the world as normal, and even the rich live in somewhat similar conditions. Yes, they have running water and air conditioning and modern apartments, but those things are minor. They have no cars, no estates, and not much more food than everyone else. That’s actually the key point to selling this. No possibility of escape is shown because there is no other world to escape to: this is not a tale of two worlds, nor is this a world caused by a villain who can be defeated and the world freed... this is the world.

Finally, the most important piece is Sol’s death scene. Up to this point in the film, everything has been grim and dystopian except the luxury apartment where Thorn spends a couple days with the concubine (something which suggests a very different set of morals in this world, by the way). What this has done is adjust your expectations so that you see the luxury apartment as the ideal world compared to the horrible world outside. Then Sol is shown the video of our Earth and nature in all its glory, and it strikes you how horrible this world really is that the tiny, sparse luxury apartment is viewed as paradise. This is enhanced by the death of Sol, who is the one character who gives Thorn hope. (As an aside, this is a powerful scene made all the more powerful in that Edward G. Robinson was dying of cancer when he filmed it – it was his last scene – and only Heston and Robinson knew about this. Heston claimed the scene haunted him for years and it really is easy to feel the emotion within the scene.)

Then the other shoe drops. Having had your eyes opened by the short film, you are suddenly shown the secret. Not only is this secret horrible, but even worse, you realize right away that knowing it changes nothing because there is no other food supply... this is their fate. At that moment, you truly realize what genuine dystopia is. No other 1970's dystopian film comes close to this. To the contrary, all the others, like Logan’s Run are about worlds where people seem happy until they learn they aren’t truly free. That’s kind of a piddly complaint compared to the hell on Earth that is Soylent Green. Even something like Planet of the Apes lacks the punch of this film because it seems so implausible and like it can’t happen to us. Soylent Green feels like it can. And that makes this a special film.

Ok, but that brings up a couple problems. First, this film feels like it rambles. Had this film been made with modern storytelling techniques, it would have been a much stronger film... think the style of Minority Report. Secondly, this is a hard film to enjoy. Heston is not a likable character; he’s an abusive cop. It is an ugly film to look at. And it posits a horror, but without a solution so it is frustrating to watch.

Further, the film is ideological crap. This film was made in the 1970's when Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” was the big seller among liberals. They were convinced that humans were going to breed themselves into a polluted, overpopulated, starving world. But their ideology was deeply flawed. They ignored the fact that population growth, like other growth, is not straight-line growth... it peaks and then falls again. They wrongly assumed that “overpopulation” leads to poverty – to the contrary, some of the richest places on earth are the most densely populated (Tokyo is as large as the nightmare city in Soylent and is one of the most prosperous on the planet). And they utterly failed to grasp how vast the Earth really is. That makes the message here of culling the population before the peons breed rather obnoxious.

If you can set those things aside, however, this is a super smart and well-made film. It is one that everyone should see, even if you know the ending. Just try to forget the ending and imagine the shock of realizing the twist for the first time... and that there isn’t a thing those people can do about it.

In any event, remember that Tuesday is Soylent Green Day. Yummy.

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Film Friday: Twelve Monkeys (1995)

I want to like Terry Gilliam’s films. I want to respect Terry Gilliam’s films. But I can’t. They’re a mess. Twelve Monkeys is an exception. Twelve Monkeys is almost brilliant. What makes it brilliant is its twist on time travel paradoxes. What makes it “almost” is Gilliam’s usual problems.

** spoiler alert -- I will talk about the ending **

Based on the French short film La jetée, Twelve Monkeys is a complex time travel story about a dystopian future. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time from the future to observe key players who will cause a viral apocalypse. Specifically, he’s sent to observe Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) who will form a group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, who appear to take credit for destroying humanity. Goines’ father (Christopher Plummer) owns a biotechnology firm, and the future scientists who send Willis back think Pitt stole a deadly virus from his father and unleashed it on the world. But things don’t quite turn out that way.

“Almost” Brilliant

Terry Gilliam is his own worst enemy. He loves including nonsensical images, characters who are too conscious of being on film, and chaotic scenes that fall apart immediately if you look at the chaos rather than the main characters. Essentially, he hamstrings his talent with his penchant for ridiculousness which he thinks is a statement about humanity. It’s not. Twelve Monkeys worked because Gilliam didn’t write it. It contains many of his trademark problems, but those things were not enough to ruin this strong script.

One thing Gilliam does do right, however, is present a fascinatingly nuanced peek at insanity. Twelve Monkeys involves three purportedly insane characters, and each gives us a different take on the subject:

● Willis isn’t actually insane, though he thinks he is. His problem is he’s weak-minded and feels out of place when he gets sent back in time to a world he doesn’t understand. But he only truly loses touch with reality when he tries to conform to a world he knows to be wrong.

● Pitt is a spoiled rich kid. He isn’t insane, but he likes the idea of being insane because he thinks it makes him special and it affords him the freedom to lash out at those around him. Pitt’s insanity is most like the insanity Hollywood villains normally portray and ironically, our belief that he’s insane leads us on a wild goose chase.

● Finally, Dr. Goines’ assistant Dr. Peters (David Morse) is truly insane as he becomes fascinated with the idea of wiping out the human race. He is the ultimate example of power corrupting, only it corrupted his mind.

Brilliance: Time Travel Paradox

What makes Twelve Monkeys so brilliant is how it deals with time travel paradoxes. Hollywood generally uses two types of time travel paradoxes, but rarely combines them. This film combines them and then adds a fascinating twist.

The grandfather paradox is the idea that you can’t go back in time and kill your grandfather because then you would never exist to go back in time in the first place. Ergo, you can’t change the past. On its surface, Twelve Monkeys is about that paradox. Willis gets sent back in time to our present by future scientists. They want Willis to observe events and discover how the virus that destroys humanity gets released. This will allow them to go back to that exact moment and get a sample of the virus before it mutates, which they can use to stop the virus in the future. And indeed, pay attention and you'll see one of the scientists sitting next to Peters on the plane for that very purpose.

But why not stop the virus being released? Because of the grandfather paradox. If they stop Peters, the future will change BUT then they wouldn't exist to come back and stop Peters -- hence Peters still releases the virus. Ergo, time can’t be changed. To pound this home, we see all of Willis’ attempts to change the future fail. By trying to disavow his mission when he first arrives in the present, he actually gives Pitt the idea to destroy humanity, which sets everything into motion. By trying to tell Pitt’s father what will happen, Willis causes Pitt’s father to change his security protocols, which allows Peters to steal the virus. Finally, by trying to stop Peters at the airport, Willis’ gets himself killed right before a young boy who happens to be Willis and who will be scarred from this, which will cause him to become maladjusted, which is what gets him chosen by the scientists to go back in time. In effect, the more Willis tries to change the future, the more he causes it.

That’s what most reviewers got out of the film -- that Willis made his own destiny and couldn’t change the future. But something even more interesting is going on.

Brilliance: The Second Paradox

There is a second time travel paradox, which involves someone from the present bringing something back from the future which causes the future. For example, bringing back DNA from a killer monkey, which then gets used to create the monkey, which otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Logically there cannot be a killer monkey until it is created, yet in this scenario they skip ahead and steal its DNA before they actually create it. Is that possible? Logic can’t help us answer this because it is a paradox -- it exists outside logic.

From Willis’ perspective, Twelve Monkey involves the grandfather paradox. He wants to change events, but can’t. But from our perspective, Twelve Monkeys involves the second paradox, because Willis comes from the future and causes the very future he wants to stop. Including both paradoxes in the same film is already a fascinating twist. But there’s more.

Anyone trying to stop Willis will be subject to the grandfather paradox because he is now part of the past. It would be the same thing as if they tried to shoot Peters. They would cease to exist and thus events would continue as before. It is an inescapable loop. But there is one way out: Willis can change the past. Think about it. The reason the grandfather paradox is a problem is that once the time traveler changes the past, the future changes, which prevents the time traveler from coming back and changing the past, which resets the past to the way it was before the time traveler intervened. But that isn’t what would happen here because it was Willis’ actions which caused the timeline in the first place. If Willis doesn’t speak to Pitt or Pitt’s father, there will be no virus and no future from which Willis can travel to the past. But since the new virus-free timeline doesn't depend on Willis coming back and doing something, it won't revert to the virus timeline Willis wanted to change. The loop is broken. But only Willis can make this change because he’s in the unique position of being the cause. Anyone else would be subject to the grandfather paradox.

Now here’s a fascinating question. Can Willis change the future by shooting Pitt? Yes, he can. If he shoots Pitt, then the future is never created. That means Willis can’t come back to shoot Pitt, but it also means Willis can't start the events that release the virus. Hence, again, the timeline is set to its normal virus-free course and the loop is broken. But does the answer change if he shoots Peters? By the time he would shoot Peters, he’s already set events in motion in the past by talking to Pitt, so that part of the past is written, meaning the grandfather paradox should apply... but if he shoots Peters and the virus never gets released, then how can he talk to Pitt? There’s no true answer.

These are the kinds of fascinating ideas science fiction should always be striving to achieve, and that’s what makes this film so brilliant.

Bonus Question: Finally, I leave you with one last question. Throughout the film we work on the assumption the scientists realize they can’t change the past. But why does Willis “accidentally” get sent to World War I in such a coincidental way that he ends up in a photo for Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) to see? Is it possible the scientist are manipulating the past to intentionally cause their own present? And if so, why?

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Film Friday: Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is brilliant. This is filmmaking at its best because it takes science fiction and stretches it to its fullest potential, both in terms of storytelling and as an intellectual experience. It’s also noteworthy for being massively culturally relevant because it redefined “dystopia” for a new generation, and in so doing, it signaled the end of the counter-culture’s influence in science fiction.

** spoiler alert **

Loosely based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner is the story of Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford), a police specialist who hunts down and "retires" escaped androids, known as Replicants. Deckard is pursuing four Replicants, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who illegally returned to Earth to find their maker, who they believe can extend their lifespans, which are artificially limited to four years. Despite the seeming simplicity of this summary, Blade Runner is a highly complex and innovative film. Indeed, it singlehandedly redefined the confines of science fiction as well as our view of dystopia.

Dystopia Lost, Dystopia Changed

Prior to Blade Runner, dystopian films invariably involved societies that appeared perfect on the surface, but were soulless underneath. From Logan’s Run to Rollerball to Fahrenheit 451, these societies appeared health, happy and peaceful, but something was always missing, some element of humanity was stripped away. This concept fit perfectly with the clash between the counter-culture and the conformity society created after World War II. But Blade Runner changed that.

The dystopian world of Blade Runner is dark, dirty and full of the twisted dregs of humanity. This is a world that destroyed itself, not with a bang but with neglect, where those who could escape to a better life moved to the off-world colonies, leaving humanity's flotsam to fester in the collapsing, polluted world left behind. Moreover, this dystopia came about because society fell apart, not because society was too tightly controlled, as was the case in prior dystopian films. Thus, whereas the pre-Blade Runner view of dystopia was the counter-culture’s view of the worst aspects of conformist society run amok, the dystopia in Blade Runner was society’s view of the worst elements of the counter-culture run amok. And with rare exceptions, this has become the view of dystopia which dominates films today. Blade Runner marks this serious shift in societal attitudes.

Where No Science Fiction Has Gone Before

Blade Runner also singlehandedly expanded the bounds of science fiction. How? By realizing that science fiction need not follow the trappings and conventions of science fiction, and by realizing that any story can be interpreted as science fiction. Indeed, nowhere in Blade Runner will you find spaceships or laser-gun fights or aliens and strange planets. Even the very dialog of Blade Runner is unlike anything that came before. For example, whereas science fiction always had a penchant for long, quasi-melodramatic dialog and grandiose plots, Blade Runner introduced the minimalism of film noir, with punchy but sparse dialog and inwardly focused plots.

All of this was new and it showed that any story could be told as science fiction, not just stories about rocket ships. In fact, I would argue that Blade Runner actually demonstrated that science fiction was not so much its own genre, as it had always been understood to be, but was really a setting in which other genres could be played out. In other words, Blade Runner showed there is no such thing as a science fiction movie, there is instead a crime story, or mystery, or comedy, or love story set in a science fiction world.

It’s Great Because It Expands Your Mind

Finally, let’s finish with what makes Blade Runner such a great film. Beside the obvious, i.e. great acting, super writing, and eye-catching settings, it was the philosophical questions that lifted Blade Runner to another level. The primary question Blade Runner asks is what does it mean to be human. It does this through an examination of three characters: Deckard, Rachael and Roy.

Rachael (Sean Young) is a Replicant who doesn’t know she’s a Replicant. She works for the head of the Tyrell Corporation, the creator of the Replicants, and her life seems real enough. She has an apartment, a job, photos of her childhood, and even memories of growing up. She walks, talks, breathes, thinks and appears to experience the complete range of human emotions. Yet, she is a machine. But does that really matter? She seems human in every way. She is emotionally aware. She has no expiration date like the rest. And she doesn’t even know she’s a machine. So what makes her different than the humans around her?

Roy is easily the most interesting of the three; he’s also the most human (intentionally so). Roy is programmed to be an assassin, and he knows he’s a Replicant. He also knows he’s designed to expire after a five year lifespan, a safeguard put in place because Tyrell discovered Replicants would develop full-blown emotions after five years. . . a quicker time than human children mature. Roy desperately wants more life, and the way to get that, he thinks, is to confront his maker. But when Tyrell tells Roy it’s impossible to extend his life, Roy kills his creator. He then decides to toy with and kill Deckard as a form of spite for his own pending death. But at the last moment, just before Roy expires, he suddenly realizes the value of life and he saves Deckard from death. In effect, Roy fully matures from a mere tool to an emotional child to a fully-mature adult, which is a remarkable transformation for a machine.

Here we are given several issues to consider. First, we are asked what makes Roy not-human. Unlike Rachael (or even the other Replicants who came to Earth with Roy), Roy has fully repudiated the false past he was given. He’s also thrown off his programming and set about becoming his own man. He's an independent being with free will, and he craves life and, ultimately, comes to understand its value. In this way, Roy becomes more human than many real humans will ever be. Yet, he is a machine. So is he alive or isn’t he? And what makes him so? Also, what of Roy’s relationship with his creator? What does Roy killing his creator say about Roy’s independence and ours? Would we lash out the same way if we learned that our creator was some flawed, mortal creature? Would that set us free or would it lessen us?

Lastly, we come to Deckard, the human we use for comparison. But there’s a problem with Deckard. . . we’re not actually sure he’s human. At no point does Blade Runner ever say or even openly suggest that Deckard is not human, but the evidence is there. He has no real life outside of his job and no past about which we learn. He has memories of childhood and photos, but they are very similar to Rachael’s packaged memories. He’s emotionless, cold, and functional, i.e. he’s machinelike. Moreover, the one character we know to be human, because he’s physically defective, is Gaff (Edward James Olmos), and Gaff treats Deckard with disdain much as if he knows Deckard is merely a deluded machine. So is Deckard human or not? We don’t know and that’s the beauty of the writing. We are left to try to justify his humanity in ways that differentiate him from Roy and Rachael, and in the process we explore what it is that makes us human and alive.

Finally, one last issue worth discussing is hinted at throughout the film: why make Replicants at all? Why not just make functional robots, rather than making them look and act human? One possible explanation involves the purposes to which these Replicants were put -- “off world hit squad” and “pleasure model,” i.e. because they would need to blend in. But what does that say about us? It’s easy to see these as purposes to which we would actually put androids, but that means we would be striving to put ourselves on a par with God, only to use our greatest achievement (creatures created in our own image) to satisfy our basest instincts or our most evil desires. That doesn’t say much for us, does it? And what does it say that we don’t even give these creatures free will? As self-made God, we certainly seem to come up short. So could we create real Replicants to achieve only our better instincts? Would we? And if they are alive for all practical purposes, should we even try to create them, given our obvious flaws?

These are the kinds of questions Blade Runner raises and we can spend hours debating them. Indeed, this is where science fiction draws its strength, in its ability to ask these questions without angering the audience by insulting their faith, or race, or gender, or whatever. And by injecting these kinds of questions into what would otherwise be a simple story about a police officer hunting some escaped killers, this film suddenly takes on a level of depth that makes this more than just a film; it becomes an educational experience, as we are asked to examine our own beliefs and thereby understand ourselves a little bit better.

And that makes it pretty darn cool.

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Film Friday: The Fifth Element (1997)

In the 1950s, science fiction was forward looking but silly. In the 1960s, science fiction became humorless and introspective about man’s place in the universe. Then science fiction became darkly dystopian -- we suck and it’s all going down the drain. It is against this backdrop of Blade Runner knock-offs and dark, leather clad aliens roaming ruined planets, that we find Luc Besson’s richly-textured view of the future in The Fifth Element. Besson (La Femme Nikita, Leon) presents a movie that is both ambitious and daring, and which, consequently, stands unique among science fiction films today.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

The Fifth Element is the story of the battle between good and evil. Representing good, we have (1) a religious order that protects a secret weapon placed on the earth by an alien species (Mondoshawans), (2) retired-soldier turned cabdriver Corbin Dallas (Bruce Willis), and (3) the universe’s supreme being -- a genetically perfect woman named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich). Representing evil, we have a powerful force hidden within a molten ball of rock and fire. Assisting evil is industrialist Zorg (Gary Oldman) and a group of mercenary aliens known as Mangalores. The story revolves around the need for the good guys to gather four stones and return them to an ancient Egyptian temple in time to allow the secret weapon to stop the evil force from returning to Earth. But it is beyond the basic story where The Fifth Element really becomes special.

Besson’s Daring Film

What separates The Fifth Element from other science fiction movies are the daring and interesting choices Besson makes as a director. Indeed, Besson violates several “rules” of the science fiction genre:

1. The Hero Must Defeat The Villain In The Big Showdown: Amazingly, Corbin Dallas, the hero, never meets with or communicates with either the evil force or Zorg at any point in the film. Corbin never even learns who Zorg is. At one point, Zorg does briefly shoot at Leeloo, but like Corbin, she has no idea who Zorg is and they never speak. Yet, the audience never feels deprived of the big show down.

2. Everyone Speaks English: Several of the aliens speak languages other than English, and they are not subtitled. More significantly, Leeloo, the heroine, does not speak a recognizable word of English until near the end of the film. Yet, it works. Not only does Besson find alternative means for making her understood, but it lends her character a reality that is lost in other movies when the strangest of aliens start speaking perfect English.

3. Always Tie Your Move To The Present: To draw the audience into the film, science fiction directors always tie the movie into the present. This can be as blatant as including scenes from the present day to as “subtle” as having the characters pontificate about “the twentieth century” . . . looking at you Star Trek. Besson does it differently. The film begins with an opening sequence that takes place in 1913, and then immediately shifts to 2263 (jumping over us entirely). And unlike Star Trek, there is no mention of our time. Yet, the audience never feels distant from the film because the film shows us a future that feels like a natural outgrowth of our own times.

4. The Sounds of Minimalism: Science fiction soundtracks have increasingly trended toward minimalist or surreal music (like Phillip Glass). Besson takes a completely different approach. Besson uses a combination of techno music that is heavily influenced by Arabic music, Paris street musicians, and Opera. Indeed, one of the most interesting moments in the film involves the opera performance by the Diva Plavalaguna, a sort of techno opera.

5. Avoid Unusual Film Techniques: Most science fiction directors play it fairly straight, probably out of fear that they are already out on a limb with their story lines. Besson, on the other hand, does something amazing. Besson uses incredibly precise cuts to give the movie a fast paced feel despite its 127 minute run time. Moreover, Besson uses these cuts to mix different scenes involving different characters in such a way that we almost feel they are speaking to each other. This allows Besson to give us information from multiple perspectives simultaneously and it dramatically cuts down on the amount of dialog and number of scenes needed to convey necessary information to the audience. In the hands of a lesser director such cuts could easily have seemed gimmicky or confused (see Smoking Aces), but in Besson’s hands, these cuts are so well done it is difficult to conceive of this movie being filmed without them.

Besson’s Ambitious World

Beyond his daring, Besson gives the viewer another treat unlike anything in modern science fiction: he gives us an immersive world. It is the rare science fiction film that can resist showing their view of the future. But when they do, it usually takes the form of some quick narrative at the beginning of the film, followed by a handful of plot-irrelevant moments where the audience is asked to focus on an idea or two about how we will live in the future. These moments are almost always accompanied by some comment along the lines of “I can’t image how they used to. . .” and are quickly abandoned once the plot begins moving again. Consequently, these moments typically offer little more than a distraction. Not so Besson.

Besson never once makes his ideas about future conveniences into the focal point of a scene. Instead, he weaves them seamlessly into the background of each scene. For example, we see Leeloo and Zorg’s secretary applying make up, we see Corbin’s bedsheets automatically folded and his bathroom automatically washed, we see food rehydrated and a 23rd Century version of a cigarette machine, but these things happen in the background of scenes. Besson never stops the film to highlight them.

Moreover, Besson’s characters are real people with real lives. Corbin’s apartment is dirty and cluttered. His mother nags him. He has an ex-wife, who ran off with his lawyer. Several characters have pets. Each of the characters has a unique wardrobe -- no generic civilization-wide jumpsuits here. We see how they entertain themselves. We hear their music, we see their television ads, and we meet Ruby Rod (Chris Tucker), a truly believable 23rd Century evolution of Howard Stern.

But most importantly, we get to see the entire range of human endeavor. Almost without exception, science fiction films limit their characters to a few chosen “important” professions. Beyond the individuals directly involved in the plot, you rarely see more than soldiers, scientists, industrialists and government types. Besson shows us these, but then goes so much further. You meet religious figures (from multiple religions), cabbies, secretaries, commercial pilots, stewardesses, garbage men, dock workers, cops, McDonald’s employees, and many more. And each of these characters has a speaking part. Unlike the sterile, lonely future that is commonly presented, this is a real future where we can truly believe that billions of people live and work.

And in that regard, we are given something else that is not common in science fiction films: livable space. While most science fiction tells us that our great grand children will live in dark, dank warehouses or sterile, plastic apartments, Besson’s characters live and work in bright, ergonomic, livable (and lived in) spaces. This is the world as humanity would really make it, not a world designed to increase audience tension. Seriously, would any human really go into space aboard the Event Horizon?

Lastly, Besson does something truly unusual -- he gives his aliens a full range of personalities. Indeed, the Mangalores, the main bad guys (right), are some of the most emotive aliens ever to come along. They run the gambit from joy to frustration to anger to dismay to simple puzzlement. They are stupid and foolish. They play around. They scratch their heads when they are confused. They are unlike any other aliens seen on film, and that makes them compelling.

Science fiction could learn a lot from Besson about how to create a layered, interesting view of the future.

The Message

Finally, we come to the message of the film. This is the one area where Besson fails. Despite crafting such an interesting and many faceted world, when it comes to the film’s message, Besson punts. Admittedly, he does tack a standard liberal “gee ain’t we bad” message onto the end of the film, but this seems to be used solely for the purpose of getting Dallas to admit his love for Leeloo. Indeed, earlier in the film Leeloo is seen enjoying Kung Fu movies of the type that now supposedly cause her to see nothing good in the human race. Moreover, once Dallas admits his love, this “oh rotten humans” message gets utterly discarded and the new message becomes that one person’s love can redeem the rest of the human race. And while this could be seen as religious symbolism, there is no follow up or depth to support such a message.

Earlier in the film, Besson makes several attempts to give us a message through Father Cornelius (Ian Holm). Each time someone tells him they do not have sufficient time for something, he replies: “time does not matter, only life.” But this message is meaningless. Indeed, even if Besson had something specific in mind for this message, there is no moment where we see the pay off. Thus, we are left without a message to be gleaned. . . although, maybe that's not such a bad thing?

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