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The Fifth Element

Aziz, Light!


I have loved this film since I saw it twice on opening weekend in May 1997. The soundtrack score (by Eric Senna) is sublime, the effects are incredible, and the characters are perfect! This film is one of my favorites from the mid-90s that I rewatch regularly. Bruce Willis absolutely kills it in this flick. Milla Jovovich is fantastic as Leelo (Leelo Dallas multipass!). Tricky is great to ("but I am Korben Dallas!"). Gary Oldman's Zorg is one of the coolest bad guys in Sci Fi ever. Just check out his costume (by Jean Paul Gaultier). Gaultier was a bit prescient with his gender-neutral wardrobe choices in this movie. But Chris Tucker is the shining light of ridiculousness in this Sci Fi gem as Ruby Rhod. Everything about Ruby Rhod is utterly obnoxious and beyond ludicrous, but I love him all the same. And by the end of this action adventure he is a hero and saves the world!

I remember the feeling of awe that set in while watching this movie in the theater for the first time. The feeling of being in space with these aliens and their spacecrafts was kinda overwhelming. The long dramatic tones Eric Serra used in the space scenes was exciting and jarring, in a good way. The film felt so authentically futuristic for lack of a better description.

Watching movies today is sort of interesting in new ways for me. It started with Scream about 5 years ago and has continued through the present. Nostalgia is something I refer to a lot on this blog, and that is because it has such a huge presence in my life. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm coming to grips with (nearly) turning 50.

I was watching The Fifth Element the other day, and the credits were rolling, and this intensely deep feeling of being there came over me. Of being back there, in 1997, in the theater! It was really cool and weird at the same time. And this is what I've been searching for when watching old movies, the past couple years, that feeling of going back there to that time... I'm losing memories that are near and dear to me every year. So when I get this feeling of going back there, for only a few minutes or 2 hours, it is a real gift.

This may sound ridiculous, I get it. Why can't I just live for today, right? Well, I do, but I also enjoy reminiscing about the days when the world was really new to me. This film had visuals that completely stunned me. Eric Serra's music was so alien and beautiful and really fit this world that Luc Besson had created. And this film still has more for me to enjoy. For instance, I always thought that the NYC of the future was incredibly tall, but it appears, after looking at the movie in 4K, that certain scenes show us that NYC never really grew all that high, higher anyway, but rather, as Earth's ocean levels receded, they dug down into the earth itself. For instance, in once scene with Mr Kim and his Chinese food boat is leaving Korben Dallas's apartment, in the background you can see Manhattan (I guess Korben lives in Brooklyn?) and a bridge that should be just above water, but it is not. It seems that water isn't even visible from this view, which shows that the water level is maybe hundreds of feet lower, as the city has descended into the bedrock (?) itself? So then, where's the fog, deep in the lower sanctum of new New York? It's interesting, and likely we can only guess because this film never became a franchise, much to my dismay.



Over 25 years later and I'm still learning new things about The Fifth Element and it's lore.

Luc Besson put out Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets (based on Valerian and Lauraline, the French comic by Jean-Claude Mezieres and Pierre Christin) a few years back. I think if this film as a spiritual successor to The Fifth Element. I really wish Besson had Eric Serra return for the film's score... The reason I say this is because I don't remember anything of the score in Valerian, whereas I have the score to The Fifth element on CD and listen to it regularly. It's as wonderful as the film itself.

The Fifth Element is coming back to theaters for a couple days thanks to Fathom Events. I'm seeing it again in the theater with Ed, whom I went with twice to see the Fifth Element during its theater run, this time with his teenage son. Pretty cool. I get to experience it just like it's 1997 all over again.


***Dan and I saw Tricky (with Whale) at Bohager's in November 1998. We were immediately fans of Tricky because of his role in The Fifth Element.
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