Elysium: The Art of the Film
Published by Titan Books, August 2013
Written by Mark Salisbury, with a Foreword by Neill Blomkamp
178 pages
ISBN: 978 178 1162 477
Review by Mark Yon
In 2009 an independent film came seemingly out of nowhere to generally receive praise. According to Wikipedia, it “was named one of the top 10 independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. The film received four Academy Awards nominations, seven British Academy Film Awards nominations, five Broadcast Film Critics Association nominations, and one Golden Globe nomination.” The film was District 9: made on a fairly low budget of $30 million, it recouped its money at least ten times over.
This is the art book of director Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up movie. Elysium is a movie that is set in the world of 2159, with the wealthy living on a space station called Elysium and the rest of the population on an overpopulated Earth. The budget has been an estimated $115 million.
As art books go, this is a great looking book. Divided into two sections (first section Earth, second section Elysium) we are shown the locations, the sets, the imagined robots, craft and weapons of the Earth of the future. The film looks incredible visually, and this book shows the thinking behind the scenario and the locations of the film.
It is therefore quite an extensive book, covering what seems to be most of the main locations – Mexico City for a future Los Angeles, as well as the imaginary, rather 2001-like Elysium space station itself. It is perhaps worth warning (though perhaps unavoidable) that the plot of the film is pretty much given away by the drawings herein, and comments throughout the text. Some of the pictures are very gory, a feeling that the director was trying to get for certain parts of the film.
The film seems to use a lot of other films as inspiration. By the production designer’s own admission, the space station Elysium owes a lot to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Earth scenes are reminiscent of City of God. I think that many of the vehicles here clearly owe at least a nod to Blade Runner, a point reinforced by the fact that the book includes some of Syd Mead’s production drawings for Elysium. Syd, set designer on Blade Runner and Tron, is one of my favourite film set designers (along with Ridley Scott and Bond visionary Ken Adam, if you must know) and his designs on the Elysium medical bay set are as good as I would’ve hoped. His interviewed comments on the production also make interesting reading.
To the drawings themselves. They are generally as detailed and as exciting as you’d expect. However a lot of the drawings are different versions of digital drawings, which can be a little repetitive – the same drawings of craft, uniforms, robots, etc but with different livery, so to speak. The sets, both in photo and drawing form, generally look great.
The interviews by Mark Salisbury are adequate in that they cover most of the usual sorts of things you expect in such a book. There are interviews with director Blomkamp (about creating the world of Elysium, his work with Weta Workshop), production designer Philip Ivey, and some nice (but brief) quotes from co-stars Matt Damon, Sharlto Copley and Jodie Foster.
All in all this is an attractive package that illustrates the film nicely and gives the reader some detail of the thinking behind the film as well as the processes that go into the making of a movie. If you like the ideas of the movie, you’ll get a lot from this book.
Mark Yon, August 2013
