95. The Fifth Element

Luc Besson, 1997

It mu5t be found.  This was the unforgivably cheesy tag line for what appeared to be yet another forgettable sci-fi picture in the mid to late nineties.  I mean really, do we need to use numbers when a letter will do perfectly well?  Still, I suppose it's better than Se7en.  At any rate, this had all the markings of a film along the lines of Supernova or Space Truckers.  Imagine my surprise on finding this visually rich spectacle when I came home from the video store.  Just as Flash Gordon brought a decidedly different, and largely ignored, vision to sci-fi in the eighties, The Fifth Element brings an entirely new cinematic vision to the nineties, but where Flash Gordon was heavily influenced by camp aesthetics and perhaps eve the work of Mario Bava (I'm thinking especially of Planet of the Vampires here, wish I'd thought of that when I made the Flash Gordon posting a couple of days ago), Besson seems to be drawing from the European sci-fi comic book aesthetic in The Fifth Element.  For those of you familiar with the magazine, I think you'll agree that the film has more than a passing resemblance to the average issue of Heavy Metal, the long running European sci-fi anthology.  Of course, there was a film directly adapted from Heavy Metal.  That film, an animated feature released in 1981, just doesn't capture the aesthetic in the way The Fifth Element does.  This seems to me to be largely due to the fact that it is an animated feature and not of the best quality.  Not to mention the simple fact that, as much as I myself champion animation, there is something about pulling off the same aesthetic in live action, which Mr. Besson does expertly, that is much more gratifying.  His success in this realm is astounding.  The cities, the space ships, the airport/spaceport, the aliens, the costumes, and even a McDonald's all appear to be torn from the pages of that magazine and the design boards of Moebius, himself one of the production designers and an accomplished artist in the European comics scene as well.  All of it looks thorough alien and completely stylized, yet none of it looks fake.  The aliens themselves, who involve a great deal of animatronics and make up effects and who are lighted with bright, consistent lighting, rather than being hidden in shadow as many film creatures are, look remarkably real.  One race is fairly reptilian and are essentially guys in suits with animatronic heads, but they do not appear that way.  The paint and make-up applications, creating convincing texture and sheen, are entirely convincing. 

The plot itself, revolving around the search for a "fifth element" that will save the earth from an amorphous evil space blob, is really as silly as Flash Gordon's, let alone anything from Heavy Metal.  Yet, once again it works.  Yet again, we have a film in which all of the actors are working to sell the material, although most of them don't resort to shameless over acting.  Both Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich play their parts essentially straight, if more than a little eccentric, and it works.  Gary Oldman is the only one of the cast to really go out of his way to chew scenery, and he is just as successful.  It really amazes me how well these contrasting styles work.  The only real problem here is Chris Tucker.  You need to understand that this is not a film that takes itself entirely seriously.  Oh, it certainly takes itself more seriously than, say, Flash Gordon does, but it does strive to be fun and entertaining, freely acknowledging the delightful eccentricity of the characters and the sets.  Thus, for the first two acts, the film clearly needs no specifically comic relief character.  Admittedly, the third act is a great deal more action oriented and less frivolous, but so many of the eccentricities, particularly that over the top evil that Gary Oldman crafts so effortlessly, persists.  Still, the filmmakers seem to think that we need a character to inject some more of the film's earlier humor into the last act.  Enter Chris Tucker's future DJ character, Ruby Rhod, phallic imagery definitely intended.  Rhod is incredibly annoying and lessens every scene he's in.  The film's sense of humor works very well for it throughout, especially early on, when it is spread out between a number of characters and situations, but when that humor is concentrated into one being, he becomes too much to bear, especially when, as I have said, as much humor as is necessary continues to exist outside of him.  Still, his appearance is not as bad as, say, Jar Jar Binks.  While he diminishes the film, he does not ruin it and The Fifth Element remains near perfect spectacle on every level.