Our Outer Reality, Compromised: The Lost Potential of Alexandre Aja’s Oxygen (2021)
By Trevor Ruth
The “Ship of Theseus,” a famous text by the ancient Greek historian Plutarch, follows the philosophical paradox surrounding identity and remains one of the great puzzles of western thought. It offers a unique dilemma to the reader that is often reconsidered time and time again: if every part of something is reconstructed, is it still the same object as it was before? While the theory that the human body eventually recreates itself on a molecular level over a certain amount of time is still inconclusive, it is still worth wondering if we are truly the same person after however many years it takes for our bodies to undergo total metamorphosis. Science fiction does well to consider this question from a rational and modernistic point of view. A good example of this is in Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009), which follows a man on a lunar base confronted by a clone of himself in a chaotic dichotomy of personal identity and purpose. A much more recent example comes in the form of Oxygen (or Oxygène, 2021), directed by Alexandre Aja (famous for his contributions to the New French Extremity movement with Haute Tension in 2003), a film that follows a young woman (Mélanie Laurent) as she awakens in a damaged cryogenic chamber and is bombarded with endless layers of revealing twists that go so far as to transport the audience into the far reaches of outer space and—indeed—reveals that she is actually a clone. Did I just spoil the climax for you? Don’t worry, because there are plenty of layers to the narrative to distract you from the fact that the film could have easily been about the pertinence of memory and self, when it tries so hard to include multiple surprises at once and—as a result—loses its own sense of pertinence.
Mercifully, the film does well to drop us into the action quickly as the first sequence of shots interweaves between the red of the cryogenic chamber and the bright blue of rats in a lab, the parallels between our main character and the lab rats almost painful in its parallel clarity. She is greeted by an electronic Artificial Intelligence known as MILO (voiced by Mathieu Amalric) who informs her that the pod has been damaged and the oxygen levels inside the pod are declining rapidly. At first, she is unable to remember anything outside of a few fleeting flashes of subliminal imagery in the form of her lover, some naturalistic images of a life beyond the interior of the cryogenic unit and other abstract visuals. To figure out a way to escape the pod, she looks towards clues from her past with the help of MILO’s technological interface that acts as her only connection to the outside world. In many ways, Oxygen is a reimagining of Rodrigo Cortes’ Buried (2010), as most of the tension is focused on the claustrophobic environment.
What makes this film unique is its science fiction setting: the unit has a screen with a touch display that allows MILO to look up information for our main character, who quickly realizes that she is Elizabeth Hansen, a doctor specializing in cryogenics, and that she is married to a musician named Léo Ferguson. With this information, she is able to find a number to try and contact Léo but the number only connects her to a woman who constantly hangs up. She also is able to contact the police but finds that they are withholding information from her, causing her to lose hope in finding an exit through them. After trying desperately to break open the pod, the mystery woman from Léo’s number calls back and discloses that Elizabeth has been in hypersleep for a fourteen light-year journey—along with ten thousand other passengers—to a new planet known as Wolf 1016c, where humanity is meant to repopulate due to a deadly contagion that has ravaged the Earth, including Léo. As if that isn’t enough, Elizabeth confirms that her husband isn’t actually dead, but that he’s also one of the passengers on the vessel; however after further deduction, it’s revealed that the true Elizabeth Hansen was actually the woman on the phone and that she has actually grown elderly, meaning that the Elizabeth in the pod is a genetic clone, imbued with the memories of the original primary Elizabeth. Clearly, the amount of speculative drama is never-ending though, as I’ve mentioned before, it isn’t exactly a surprising twist that our main character is a clone because the foreshadowing sets itself up in a painfully obvious fashion.
For what it’s worth, the film looks good. Having a brightly lit interior design offers an ethereal sense of disposition with the stained-glass geometry of Elizabeth’s bed and the unique ship design shown during the otherwise average exterior space shots; the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cryogenic chamber is enhanced with extreme close-ups of Laurent’s face that feels both invasive and oddly intimate, the juxtaposition of her clone gleaming with sweat in the cryogenic chamber and her earth counterpart so drastic that they almost appear as separate individuals. The soundtrack by Rob Coudert is serviceable enough as well, ranging from long Jean-Michael Jarre synth beats to a much more modern piano score interwoven with soft horns. It’s also worth commending Laurent for her engrossing performance. The rest of the cast does the bare minimum, which isn’t saying that they are bad in any way but that there is very little to be enamored by overall. Amalric feels like a legitimate machine in his blank, emotionless HAL inspired delivery, though it’s hard to compare this performance to his earlier work. Malik Zidi plays Elizabeth’s lover, Léo, but doesn’t have a single purpose in the film (nor does he speak a single line, as I recall) other than co-designing the ship that carries the clones to the new planet and dying of the virus on earth.
Perhaps the greatest flaw of Oxygen, then, is not its lack of production design or creativity, but its lack of ingenuity and personality. The film is riddled with symbolic images: lab mice in mazes, seeds spiraling from treetops and slowly descending towards the ground, the ring of white light on the screen before Elizabeth and the way that it swells and contracts as noise is passed through from MILO and her phone calls. All of this reeks of a bloated script and an even more bloated visual ego, but to be fair to its scribe, Christie LeBlanc, it’s not entirely predictable. Even if the foreshadowing is obvious, it’s still portrayed well: the subliminal shots of Elizabeth’s lost memory show the cloning process as xenomorphic mice bodies writhe in petri dishes beside their primary counterparts. Meanwhile, the haziness of Elizabeth’s memory is creatively done through out-of-focus exterior images of naturalistic imagery. My only wish is that something came from the revelation of Elizabeth being a clone that gave the film a sense of purpose. At first, she is frustrated to discover that she is a clone, but she decides to continue her mission as the film shows the clones of both Elizabeth and Léo are seen on the new planet, seemingly reunited though meeting for the first time. In some way, Elizabeth is bestowed with forbidden knowledge, which is a fascinating concept in and of itself and offers a unique dilemma that is never actually addressed: are the other clones aware that they are clones and if they are not aware, would it be better for Elizabeth to let them live in blissful ignorance or bestow them with the same knowledge that she must carry forever? It’s not like they don’t have a purpose—they have to help the human race carry on, that’s their mission. The only question that doesn’t reach any true resolution is if they are prolonging the human race as themselves, or as clones of their former selves.
Beyond the lack of identity crises, there didn’t seem to be enough present in the narrative regarding how the motif of oxygen plays into the story. At times, the loss of oxygen is used to blur the lines between reality and illusion. Aja utilizes a bit of his horror flair to invent jumpscares in the form of lab mice crowding Elizabeth’s cryochamber (which is legitimately gross) and there are moments where the continuity of Elizabeth’s memory falters as she discovers the truth of who she really is, however the film never takes any strides towards how the lack of oxygen is able to eliminate so much of Elizabeth’s perceived reality. To some extent, the space setting is almost completely unnecessary; the science fiction itself is unnecessary, though it would certainly be fascinating if the lack of oxygen was inventing the entire scenario around Elizabeth because she would clearly be hallucinating it. It would have been much more idealistic to approach the concept of memory—of confabulation—and possibly even the Mandela effect and how those memories link to our sense of self. This isn’t to say that Oxygen doesn’t have a sense of depth; it clearly sets its scenario up well and if all you’re really looking for is a fun thriller, then this will definitely occupy your time. In my experience, however, science fiction works best when it changes a person on an emotional and psychological plateau. To be fair to Aja, his films have always been more in service towards entertaining his audience. This is how he excels well in his chosen genre; I would argue that his 2006 remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is far more interesting and grotesque compared to the original, however in an era where science has made the progress of technology unremarkable, we should be looking towards deeper aspects of the human condition (or even lack thereof) for more impactful storytelling. Oxygen is a fun film but if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not sure if I’ve gained anything from having seen it and I very much doubt you will as well.
Trevor Ruth is a writer from Livermore, California, whose work has previously appeared in Occam’s Razor, The Southampton Review, and other literary journals. He writes fiction and poetry that utilizes slipstream to subvert genre ideals, as well as critical essays on film and art.