THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*

I praised Luc Besson's adaptation of the VALERIAN comic album for its emulation of the comic's "protean visual creativity," but in truth Besson had already gone that route in 1997's THE FIFTH ELEMENT, which had its origins in a story Besson began at age 16. But whereas VALERIAN was largely focused on the many forms that organic creation could take, ELEMENT is dedicated to the intertwined forces of creation and destruction. And, unlike VALERIAN, it includes a very good romantic arc.

The characters inhabit your standard multi-planetary space-opera cosmos,  implicitly evolved from a spacefaring culture based on Earth, though an assortment of aliens have become regular citizens of this galactic empire. The order of the cosmos is threatened with an apocalyptic threat, a "great evil" which Besson barely bothers to define. (It turns to be a careening dead planet aimed at Earth, which might be either a conscious or subconscious emulation of the FLASH GORDON comic strip, which was one of the grandfathers of space opera in pop culture.) 

Benevolent aliens hide four stones that can be used to save the Earth from the great evil. Though this maneuver keeps the stones safe from servants of the evil, so much time passes that no one else knows where to find them either, except for a priest named Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm). However, an Earth-ship chances across a sarcophagus containing the remains of "the fifth element," a female warrior designed by the good aliens to interact with the four element-themed stones to rescue the cosmos. Though the warrior is long dead, Earth scientists, apparently motivated only by curiosity, use biotechnology to create a new version of the warrior. Thus is born Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who does not speak English and flees the scientific compound. She takes refuge in the flying taxicab of ex-soldier Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), and he ends up linking Leeloo up with Vito, the only person with true knowledge of the cosmic threat. However, this linkage isn't nearly as important to the film as the one between Leeloo and Dallas, who's established as a guy looking for love but saddled with a nagging, needy mother. If Dallas didn't mention having been thrown over by his last girlfriend, he'd sound like a nerd.

It's not worth recounting the many incidents by which Leeloo, Dallas and Vito become united in their quest to save Earth, or how they're opposed by nasty munitions-maker Zorg (Gary Oldman) and his bad-alien goons. All said incidents, even the minor ones, are organized by Besson as a visual assault on the audience, full of eye-popping primary colors and bizarre weapons (many of which look cobbled together from diverse parts, like the sort of weapons one might see in an old movie serial.) Willis' Dallas is like Humphrey Bogart's laconic Sam Spade trying to navigate his way through the panoplies of the Ziegfeld Follies, symbolized by the flamboyant, mouthy comic relief Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker). But unlike a lot of eye-candy in Hollywood films, this visual panache represents the efforts of millions of humans who like Dallas are "looking for love," or at least sex whereby to perpetuate their species. This is the ordered cosmos, which Leeloo was designed to defend, even though she was not explicitly designed for "love."

Zorg is the opposite of innocent Leeloo. He not only makes all of his riches off munitions, he depends upon mechanisms rather than people for his support. (A funny scene between Zorg and Vito illustrates the folly of this attitude, but Zorg learns nothing from the teaching.) Though he and Leeloo have only one scene together, he represents the human passion for destruction, and as Leeloo learns more about that proclivity, she questions whether the world deserves to be saved.

Holm, Oldman and Tucker all supply fine work in their support-roles, but the film succeeds by virtue of the chemistry between Willis and Jovovich. Leeloo is not a standard adventure-heroine, though she shows off her martial skills in a bravura fight-scene that counterpoints her space-opera violence with the performance of a futuristic opera-singer. Leeloo is, as an exchange between her and Dallas makes clear, both "valiant" and "vulnerable," and their romantic union is as much responsible for the universe's survival as the power of the four elements.

ADDENDUM: Some days after writing this review I read, for the first time, two volumes of VALERIAN which comprised a single two-part story, published in 1980 and 1981 and translated in Volume 4 of Cinebook's VALERIAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. In this continuity, some alien freebooters steal four sacred boxes based on the traditional four elements of Earth folklore. This reckless action unleashes element-based monsters on 1980s Earth, causing spatio-temporal agents Valerian and Laureline to get involved. Besson certainly might have incorporated the "element weapons" trope into his narrative, but nothing else in FIFTH ELEMENT resembles the story in these particular narratives by the French comics-creators. Indeed, the theme of heroism in FIFTH ELEMENT is one that isn't often echoed in the rambling, quasi-picaresque tales of the VALERIAN universe. Besson's main point of commonality with Christin and Mezeries is their mutual love of the aforementioned visual creativitiy.