Viking Night: The Fifth Element
By Bruce Hall
September 6, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Don't take her mooltipass.
First, cast Milla Jovovich, playing that girl she usually plays. Then get Bruce Willis, playing that guy HE usually plays. Add Chris Tucker in a leopard print bodysuit that’s so tight, you have no choice but to look away. Throw in Gary Oldman in a Tupperware hat. Combine them with the Harry Canyon sketch from Heavy Metal. Put it in the oven and bake it until it’s done. Then bake it some more. Keep going until it’s too big for the oven. Dip it in sugar, light it on fire and serve. What’s this on your plate, you ask? Only the most simultaneously infuriating, confusing, beautiful and stupid movie of 1997. Filled with energy, color, and wit, The Fifth Element is supposedly a lifelong labor of love for director Luc Besson, and it shows. The costumes and set design are lavishly decadent, joyfully depicting a world where everyone developed a simultaneous fetish for plastic clothes and cheap hair dye. The cast members throw themselves into their roles as though they’re at gunpoint. The soundtrack sounds like a collaboration between No Doubt and Bob Marley. There’s a lot of talk about life, death and other universal truths.

In a nutshell, this movie is like Dune met Star Wars, dropped a bunch of acid, took a three day weekend together and filmed the whole thing. How that affects you depends on your tolerance for absurdity. If you think you could tolerate being locked in a room full of screaming first graders for eight hours, then you won’t be able to take your eyes off this movie. If you’re anyone else, results may vary. Much like the first time I tried coffee or beer, I hated The Fifth Element the first time around. And yet there was something that drew me back to it; a lingering buzz, an unhealthy compulsion – call it what you will. Usually, this means that what appears on the surface to be a horrible movie has somehow achieved something that even good films rarely do. They transcend quality and establish a level of enjoyment that transcends puny concepts like “good” and “bad.” The Fifth Element is like an insane person who proudly insists: “I’m not crazy. YOU are. I’m not over the top. YOU are.”

Well, I must be crazy because I love this movie – I’m just not entirely sure why.

In the future, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is an ex military burnout who drives a space cab and lives in a space apartment with a bunch of space junkies. He’s got no direction in life, and no apparent compulsion to improve on it. The movie never establishes why Dallas left the military or why his life is currently in the toilet, but this is something you’re going to have to get used to. All of this changes when a cute little redhead does a thousand foot swan dive into the back of his cab one afternoon.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Fifth Element asks you to take a lot of monumental things at face value and if you can’t do that, you’re not going to like what you see. The film’s first act splits time between convergent story lines – while Dallas is busy crashing his cab into things and not giving a damn, the President of the Galaxy (Tommy Lister) is dealing with a potentially monumental decision.

A destructive evil force of unimaginable power is headed straight for earth, and military power seems impotent against it. All seems lost until a kindly priest among the President’s entourage (Ian Holm, as Father Cornelius) convinces the Commander in Chief that four magical stones and and a mysterious traveler called The Fifth Element hold the key to human salvation. Unfortunately, the Traveler’s ship is attacked by bandits on the way to Earth and although she is recovered, the stones go missing. The Fifth Element turns out to be a beautiful twenty-something named Leeloominaï Lekatariba Lamina-Tchaï Ekbat De Sebat – or just Leeloo, for those of us who do not speak the language of the gods. Naturally, she’s a genetic wonder made from star dust and unicorn tears - perfect in every way, with red hair, pouty lips and a big warm, fuzzy wuzzy heart.

The Fifth Element is often derided as being endlessly derivative, and it is. Luc Besson claims he wrote the screenplay when he was a teenager, and I believe him. The one major female character is a hyper-sexualized redhead. Check. There is a prophecy about a Chosen One. Check. There’s a military veteran who had disavowed his service, yet keeps mementos of it and falls all to easily into that role when he’s inevitably called to do so. There’s even an outrun-the-explosion shot, just like in Jedi. Check, check, check. I could go on, but you get the point. It’s the same stuff you’ve seen in a dozen other action movies and read in a dozen different comic books. Indeed, we’re never told why or how Leeloo became who she is. And like the Token Female in the primary cast of many sci-fi epics, her abilities seem confined to being really hot, and really good at unarmed combat.

So be it. The stones Leeloo was travelling with were lost in a botched theft, organized by creepy industrialist with a very French name and a very American accent - Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman). Father Cornelius tells us that the only thing that can destroy the Evil headed for Earth is the four Stones, in the hands of Leeloo. When the stones are lost, a colorful, loud, violent, madcap race against time to save the universe from a threat that is never defined, using a weapon whose properties are also never established. But all of this is beside the point. Like many French things, The Fifth Element is about things both visceral and human, not to mention utterly obvious. Humans are destructive, greedy and petty. Love, understanding and charity are all that can overcome this. If our race cannot overcome its ruinous tendencies, we’re doomed.

No shit, Dick Tracy. Star Trek, Dr. Who, and a zillion books by Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven have told us the same thing for years. You can look out the damn window and see it. It’s true that none of this movie makes a lick of sense and at the film’s climax, when the brown stuff hits the fan, when it’s all finally over, you will either turn to the person next to you or mutter to yourself: “Really? Is that it?”. The movie has a message but it’s so redundant and so pointlessly conspicuous It’s like saying “don’t drink bleach” to a grown man. But that’s the funny thing about humans. We all know that cooperation, understanding and grace are more productive than jealousy, anger and violence. And yet we are still so slow to learn; slow to change. Luc Besson’s magnum opus plays out very much like something written by a teenager, but that’s part of what makes the film so endearing.

When you strip away all the CGI, all the light, sound, color and bombast, this film is essentially a child’s plea for everyone to get along - to understand, to love, to MAKE love. When you look at it in that light, it’s quite poignant and charming. Very silly, but very poignant. But the biggest appeal to me about this movie is what I said at the beginning - The Fifth Element revels in everything that it is. It’s corny, it’s derivative, it’s predictable, it’s obnoxious, but most of all, and like much of Luc Besson’s work, it’s just fun and full of European flair. It’s exciting and vibrant and alive and, well - human. If that’s not good enough for you, buy a 52 inch HDTV, throw a fetish party and put The Fifth Element on in the background. It makes for GREAT atmosphere. Fifty bucks says the shindig is a hit, and you end up doing it every week. But don’t thank me, thank a horny little French schoolboy sitting at his desk in 1970, drawing pictures of Milla Jovovich wearing nothing but orange hair dye and surgical tape. Even today, I’m sure he’d appreciate the compliment.