Disney loves to write orphans, but doesn't seem to understand them
Recently orphaned Elio Solís has been adopted by his aunt Olga, who has a busy military job and had to give up a chance for career advancement in order to take care of him. She's struggling to adjust, but hasn't said one word that would imply she resents him. Still, he feels unwanted and unwelcome. This misunderstanding on his part sparks an entire allegorical journey in which he meets a distorted mirror version of himself (no, I don't mean the clone) and learns that he isn't as alone as he thought. The message is sweet and valuable, but the way it's expressed through the narrative is sometimes muddled, which is unfortunate in a movie that focuses so much on efforts to communicate.
What sets things in motion is Elio's visit to a space museum where he learns about the search for alien life. After reasoning that there's no one on Earth who loves him, he becomes obsessed with contacting aliens, hoping to be taken by them. Any viewer who grew up with terrible parents will recognize this fantasy of adoption, but it's hard to understand in Elio's case, because his aunt is in no way whatsoever mistreating him. It's Elio who convinced himself that his presence is bad for her life. He takes too long to figure out that her choice to pause her career plans is not something he inflicted on her but something she willingly did for his benefit.
All right, she does make one mistake: she signs him up for a summer camp that teaches military discipline, which ranks very, very low on the list of things you should do to a kid who already feels lonely and expects to be abandoned. He soon gets dragged into a fistfight with other kids, which the movie treats as a pivotal moment in the course of his life.
From this point on, the emotional trajectory of Elio is best understood by placing in parallel the plotlines of the human kid Elio and the alien kid Glordon. They don't even meet until well into the runtime, but Glordon's story is basically the heightened, hyper-dramatized version of Elio's. From Elio's perspective, Olga has dumped him in that military summer camp because she's had enough of him, and also because military life is all she knows. In Glordon's case, his father, Grigon, is an interstellar tyrant who expects him to one day wear the battle armor that is traditional in their species. The armor is full of a ridiculous variety of deadly devices, and it hides, constricts and pierces the creature's soft skin. It's meant to be worn permanently. What this prospect means, when translated back into Elio's life, is that he has before him the option to deal with his complicated feelings by squeezing them under a mask of toughness. But the kind of person who would make that choice, as the movie illustrates rather literally, is not Elio's/Glordon's authentic self. It would be a disturbingly people-pleasing version of him. Olga wants a polite, obedient child, as the warlord Grigon wants a ruthless conqueror, but that's not who Elio/Glordon is.
Where this beautiful allegory falls apart is in the manner of its resolution. Elio's injury from the fistfight at the summer camp shows Olga that she was wrong in trying to steer him into her steps; Glordon's almost-death shows Grigon that galactic conquest isn't worth losing his child. The problem here is that Elio is the one who needs to change his incorrect beliefs (the movie even literalizes this point by giving him an eyepatch during the entire second act to represent his limited perspective), but the allegorized version of his struggle has the parental figure be the one who learns a life lesson (notice how it's the battle armor which has eyes, in the manner of a reverse blindfold, while the actual alien body has none). The emotional resonance is pointed in the wrong direction. Grigon's neglectful, harsh style of parenting is not the proper translation of how Olga behaves toward Elio. A charitable reading would say that Grigon stands for Elio's distorted idea of Olga, but even in that case it would still be Elio who needs to learn and grow. This thematic misfire brings to mind the better execution of the same dynamic in The Lego Movie, where the villain and the father follow neatly parallel arcs.
Despite this confusion in the handling of its ideas, Elio is not without highlights. A thrilling scene in which Olga and Elio have to pilot a spaceship through floating debris reaches a triumphant peak when they get unexpected help from random strangers, which is a better thematic conclusion to Elio's yearning for a community where he fits. Maybe he won't join the diplomatic elite of the universe, but there's plenty of excitement to be found on Earth.
Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
