"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it." when talking about "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", Luc Besson' s latest produce which was scheduled to open in China Aug. 25, the French film master mentioned Baudelaire's famous quote.
Reacting to the usual barrage of widely diverse comments from audiences and critics after the movie showed during summer time in the United States, that ranged from ecstatic praise to incomprehension and dislike, Luc Besson sat down with Xinhua, explained his personal motivation to make the movie and disclosed the marvelous there that do not be noticed.
"It's a personal story, since childhood when I fell in love with the comics of Jean-Claude Mesieres. Cops in space was fresh and new. I waited impatiently for each new installment and imagined what was going to happen next. The Valerian character was cool and a little goofy and Laureline was my first love," he joked in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Saturday.
But more seriously, he added, "Valerian's world is a magical place. It reminds me now of New York City, but with aliens, where everyone of all kinds can live together in harmony. This we need, not more hate. By this day and age, it should be possible. This is its message."
Besson always imbues his films with poignant social commentary that elevate them into auteur pieces with social relevance, taking a stand against oppression, political corruption and abuse.
Valerian is no different. Besson told Xinhua, "There is 'right' and there is 'wrong'. Children from 6 to 15 understand this. Adults, not so much... So, as a director, one's message must be either positive or cynical. I am not a cynic."
So, in Valerian, he has us rooting for the "Mülians," a lovely, primitive, but spiritually-advanced species that bear a kinship resemblance to James Cameron's Na'vi of Pandora who provide the moral compass for the film.
The Mulians live utopian lives in blissful harmony with their world until it is ruthlessly destroyed by Clive Owens' character in a ruthless, military-backed land-grab deal. This giant galactic cover-up eventually forces heroes, Valerian and Laureline, into a crisis of conscience that leads them to defy orders and help the few surviving Mülians escape to tell their tale.
The stunning, mood-evoking visuals of the film are also a proof of Besson's attitude to the world, as he has showed in past decades from "BIg Blue", "Nikita" to "Lucy", his Asian-centric crime flick exploring the collision of enhanced evolution and adaptive consciousness.
Besson is undoubtedly one of the most experimental and visionary artists working in cinema today. A master of what the French call the Cinéma du Look, his work, even at its campiest or most stylized, is never without originality or intellectual subtext. He's an idea man, and, win or lose, has the guts to try to capture his ideas on the big screen.
Valerian is a designer's dream - a visual masterpiece, Besson told Xinhua, he brought it to life with two of his gifted, longtime collaborators, production designer, Hugues Tissandier and cinematographer, Thierry Arbogast.
The film features some of the coolest and most intelligently-conceived GCI-VFX and aliens in the galaxy. And this latest foray into futuristic fiction is hardly mindless designer eye candy. Moreover, the many exotic worlds and cultures on display in the film required tremendous thought, sociopolitical analysis and creativity to create in a logically coherent fashion.
"To impact the audience, it must be real," Besson told Xinhua, "So I wrote a 800-page bible on every alien, every society, every planet in the film and I gave this to the actors so they know how to act when they meet each species."
Few directors go to such lengths to bring a world to life, but it's way of Besson, a man on a mission who would like to compelled to infuse heart and humour into Hollywood-esque turbo-action movies.
"Hollywood movies are always good," he says, "But sometimes the heart and the art is secondary to the same old formula. First must always be the 'Art'."
