The Fifth Element (1997). Directed by Luc Besson. Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Gary Oldman, and Chris Tucker.
Once upon a time, somewhere in the French countryside, a bored teenager began to write a novel. It was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an imaginative sixteen-year-old boy: hundreds of pages about an everyman character with a ridiculous sci fi name having madcap adventures in a futuristic city and falling in love with an ancient being who looks (of course) like a beautiful teenage girl.
We’ve all been there, spilling our teenage hearts all over pages and pages of notebooks. Alas, most of us will never get the chance to turn our cherished teenage ramblings into blockbuster movies. We’re not Steven Spielberg with his teenage stories about UFOs, or James Cameron with his teenage fascination with deep sea exploration.
Or Luc Besson with his hundreds of pages of unfinished novel about a guy who drives a flying taxi in a futuristic sci fi city.
Most of us will never get that chance, but I’m glad Besson did, because I love this movie and I’m so happy that it exists.
Besson first wrote the story that would evolve into The Fifth Element in the mid-’70s. The story evolved over the years; Besson started working in film from a young age and so quickly shifted from writing prose to writing screenplays. Eventually he rewrote this particular story as a very long screenplay (400 pages!), then tried to split that into screenplays for two movies, and finally condensed it into a single film.
Work on The Fifth Element began in the early ’90s, after Besson found international success with La Femme Nikita (1990). With a script in hand and production company Gaumont on board, Besson approached French comics artists Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières to bring his vision to life. Concept artists are always important in sci fi cinema, but that is especially true in this case. The Fifth Element is not based on a comic, but it absolutely looks and feels like a comic, to a degree that many adaptations of comics to film never achieve, and that some actively try to avoid. I think it’s a big part of the film’s charm that so much of its aesthetic has that retro comics feel.
We’ve seen Giraud’s work in other sci fi films; he contributed concept art to Tron (1982) and The Abyss (1989). Before that, he worked on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s never-made Dune. After that film was abandoned, Giraud co-founded the magazine Métal Hurlant, a sci fi comics anthology that hit the comics world with a splash.
This is not the place to get into a detail history of comics, but Métal Hurlant was hugely influential during its years of publication from 1975 to 1987. It has been recognized as an influence on sci fi movies across the board: everything from Star Wars to Alien (1979), Mad Max (1979) to Blade Runner (1982), Akira (1988) to the works of Studio Ghibli. It played a large part in developing a new visual style for sci fi through the ’70s and ’80s, and Giraud’s artwork is a big part of that.
Similarly, the influence of Mézières, and particularly his very long-running comic Valérian (which was published from 1967 until 2018), can be seen in sci fi from the ’70s and onward—although mostly via the filter of Star Wars. I don’t think George Lucas ever specifically named Valérian as a source of inspiration (knowledgeable Star Wars fans, correct me if I’m wrong!), but Lucas is and always has been a huge comics nerd, and many film critics have noted the similarities.
Also, as we’ve seen in several films already, the ’70s were when sci fi began embracing that lived-in, worn-down aesthetic, a shift from the clean, mid-century mod looks that had dominated so many earlier films. Valérian was one of the more prominent comics taking that approach at the time. (Besson would eventually adapt Valérian into the film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in 2017. I’ve never seen that film, so I welcome opinions from the crowd: Is it worth watching?)
As many of you likely already know, Besson also brought in an artist of an entirely different type to round out the design of the film, with haute couture fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier creating the costumes for the film. That means everything from Korben Dallas’ (Bruce Willis) ordinary guy clothes to Vito Cornelius’ (Ian Holm) priest togs of the future to Zorg’s (Gary Oldman) proto-tech bro corporate wear to Ruby Rhod’s (Chris Tucker), well, everything. And, yes, that also includes the barely-there bandages Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) wears when we first meet her. Gaultier designed nearly a thousand costumes for the film, including some nine hundred for the opera scene alone. That’s a lot of costumes, with a lot of unique designs that reference both Gaultier’s previous work and numerous other influences, and it’s hard to overstate just how important they are to the overall look of the film.
I bring up all the artistic elements of The Fifth Element’s visual style for a few reasons. For one thing, I love the film’s artistry, so I want to rave about it. It’s visually striking and unique in many delightful ways, from the aforementioned comic book aura and high fashion costumes to the charmingly old-school sci fi alien designs in the look of the Mondoshawans, the Mangalores, and the diva Plavalaguna (played by Maïwenn Le Besco, with her vocals provided by Inva Mula).
Besson has spoken about how he imagined the futuristic city setting of his story in great detail for years, so of course a great deal of work went into how this New York of the future looks and feels. And because it was made in the ’90s, the movie sits right in that cinematic sweet spot of utilizing both practical and computer effects for maximum impact. The Fifth Element’s New York is, in fact, a gloriously detailed miniature model—a huge miniature, large enough to walk around in, but still a miniature. The flying cars, the restaurant boat, the Mondoshawan ship, the whole of Fhloston Paradise—those are all also miniatures, created under the supervision of effects artist Mark Stetson. (Stetson also made the models for Blade Runner and a gazillion other films.) But all of them are surrounded by digital effects: the layers of traffic in the city, the lower and higher levels of the buildings, the distant buildings and the sky, that’s all layered in with the models to create a busy, vibrant city. It’s a very skillful blend of practical and computer effects, the sort of combination that still doesn’t look the least bit dated.
Note: But some scenes are a lot simpler. The theater aboard Fhloston Paradise is literally just the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That’s where they filmed it. Sometimes a film has to fake it, and sometimes a film can just use the real thing.
Second note: Associate producer John Amicarella has told the story about how when he was bringing the negatives of the Diva’s scene at Fhloston Paradise from London (where the movie was primarily filmed) to Los Angeles (where the special effects were produced), the containers carrying the physical reels of film fell out of the airplane and onto the tarmac at LAX, where they were run over by a forklift operator. But they managed to save it.
Third note: Every time I have to look up how to spell “Fhloston” I cry a little inside.
I do also think there’s something more going on, however, when it comes to the film’s visual style, something that is just the fact that it looks cool and was skillfully made. And I think it relates to why people still love this movie so much.
There’s an interesting 1997 interview with Besson and Gaultier in The New York Times, where they talk about the critical response to The Fifth Element in France, as well as being in the peculiar position of working on a film that deliberately mashes up what is traditionally considered high-brow art (French film, high fashion) and what is thought to be more low-brow (sci fi with comics sensibilities, American-style action films). At the time of its production, The Fifth Element was the most expensive French film ever made, something that a great many contemporary reviews note with a combination of bafflement or even faux outrage. It’s as though critics—both in France and abroad—could not comprehend that a French film (from France! where they make arthouse films!) could incorporate the whiz-bang wackiness of American-style action film.
To be clear, the movie was a tremendous success and remains beloved to this day. You can’t swing a tentacle at a convention without hitting a Fifth Element cosplayer, which is a sure sign of enduring love. But it is clear from reading contemporary reactions that a lot of people didn’t quite know what to make of it at first. And I guess I can understand that, especially if one feels it a necessity to make something of a film to justify enjoying it.
But I also think it’s important to note that Besson said, “The movie is not like a big theme movie, but it’s important.” Sure, it’s about saving the world, but that’s deliberately set up in a very straightforward, good versus evil way. Sure, it’s about love defeating evil. And, yes, it takes those big ideas and makes them wacky and camp, with jokes and slapstick and zany misadventures. But the other thing Besson has said about the film is that he wants all of it to lead to that moment at the end when Leeloo asks, “What’s the use in saving life when you see what you do with it?” It may be an oddly serious note at the end of a movie with very few serious moments, but it’s still a good question. What are we doing? What is the use of life when there is so much pain and suffering and violence in the world? What can we do that would make life worth saving?
The movie offers one answer to Leeloo’s question: We can love. But I think, intended or not, the film itself is another answer: We can make art. And we can do it boldly, brashly, without restraint.
Everything about The Fifth Element is meant to be big and flashy and impossible to ignore. The aliens, the villains, the heroes, the settings, the style, it’s all deliberately, joyfully in-your-face, and it never tries to pretend otherwise. It’s not a film with a bit of glitter dusted over the surface; it’s a film with glitter in its bones, all the way down to its core, the kind of glitter that sticks on everything. It’s weird, it’s wacky, it’s all over the place, it’s loud, and most of all it’s fun. It’s a strong argument in favor of never letting go of those wild ideas we had when we were bored and lonely sixteen-year-olds letting our imaginations run wild, to never fully demolishing the worlds we escaped into when we needed a place to play.
The Fifth Element feels like it’s made up of bits and pieces from other sci fi stories across all types of media, because it shares so many influences with so many stories that are woven in the fabric of sci fi media. That makes it comfortable, even familiar, but not in a bad way. Because, at the same time, there really is nothing quite like The Fifth Element. Even now, decades later, there’s nothing like it out there. And that’s brilliant. That’s why it’s so wonderful.
What are your thoughts on The Fifth Element? Has your perspective on it changed over the years?
Next week: I hope you’re ready for some more wacky sci fi misadventures, because we’re watching Repo Man, which a few commenters on this column have suggested over the past year. Watch it on Amazon, Apple, Microsoft
