The Fifth Element (1997)

directed by Luc Besson

Eve Strillacci

KD: People move to New York City for one of two reasons: the Dream™, or for work. Korben Dallas moved to New York City to fly taxi cabs for Jean-Baptist Emmanuel Zorg. Whatever Dreams™ he’d once had were in smithereens, just like every member of his space platoon, just like his marriage, just like his hairline...

Me: I moved to New York City in 2016, worn out and see-through after a three-year stint teaching business writing to petulant teens. I was terrified of the city, its narrow avenues choked with people at all hours of the night, of how impossible it was, with three roommates, to speak quietly to myself about anything at all.

An extroverted introvert, I, sadly, write quite a lot of poetry.

KD: Like you, Korben is a simple man. He likes his women perfect and his suits black. He is a cat person. He does not recognize the twin violence of poverty and pollution shaping the world around him. He does not see the truth of what he must save.

Me: Like you, I don’t own an iron. It’s less about the space they take up and more about the fact that I don’t know how to use one. At my old job—where I never wore anything that couldn’t be air-dried—I worked on criminal justice textbooks, and also occasionally emptied the office compost bin. One likes to think that neither was a wasted effort, but suspects the same of both.

KD: Short, blonde, receding hairline. Physique: Stellar.

Me: Short, blonde, arguably too much hair (see: shower drain, upper lip). Physique: Wouldn’t you like to know?

KD: Licensed to kill in a list of vehicles twice the length of your last CVS receipt. Will literally turn his world upside down for the right fare.

Me: Prefers driving on country roads; can parallel park perfectly in the absence of witnesses.  Haven’t owned a vehicle in four years (I’d rather piss myself than drive a car in the city) but am a recent proficient of the Q101 bus. It’ll likely take the rest of my life to master New York’s stranger subway lines.

Once, shortly after it was rerouted from Queens, a friend and I accidently took the Q deep into the Upper East Side. Flashes of new stations interrupted the steady dark, each glimpse more pristine than the last. Tiled faces pulsed past, brief constellations of color blurring just as quickly into nothing. By the time we realized these newly dug temples were not the battered stations we’d hoped for, we were miles past and stories deep. We bailed.

Korben Dallas literally flies from an exploded paradise planet to an ancient Egyptian tomb without directions, so I assume this kind of thing doesn’t happen to him often. But when we emerged from the sterile chamber, several stories of escalator surging behind us—a dark tongue down a darker throat—I imagine we felt a little like Korben did when he walked out of that tomb, Leeloo a spent weight in his arms.

We slouched down the streets in New York’s dishwater light, briefly contemplating an apparatus that vends fresh cupcakes in the dead of night. We didn’t buy any. We found the right tunnel and descended again. Same story. Same flashes of light.

KD: Korben Dallas hasn’t knowingly answered a call from his mother in a decade. His girlfriend learned English two hours ago, and she is literally the only other woman in his universe who isn’t a secretary or an alien. Arguably she’s also an alien? This is unclear.

It is pretty clear that she thinks humanity is shitty, and it’s also pretty clear that she’s right. Korben only convinces her otherwise because he wants to sleep with her and he can’t do that if he’s dead.

Me: Have the dating apps made me bitter? No. Absolutely not. No.

KD: She is the first tender thought he has had in a long time. She is the stray cat that lives long enough to bite him, but also long enough to forgive him for what the others did. She is the only streak of luck that doesn’t break.

There is a moment, when he is holding her and the fury of a thousand silenced voices shatters from her. He glimpses the edge of something, a breakwater at the limit of experience where he thinks he could hide from the pain.

—the lower swathe of his hometown is blanketed in a rancid smoke, a polluted current he dreams about drowning in    corporations strangle the free market, drawing power from every conceivable human malady police rip men from their beds at night—

He waits, trembling, for silence to rediscover them. He falls headfirst into its wounds. 

Me: I bought a teal bath mat to match the green and salmon tile in my ‘60s-styled bathroom. (I’m leaning in.) I paid $25 for a candle that looks like an ice cream bowl and smells like nirvana. I put a magic eight ball on my windowsill but I’m too afraid to ask it —do we make it   will I deserve it— anything.

KD:  There are literally three freeze-dried generals crisping in his freezer.

Me: After breakfast I crawl back into bed to watch the birds reshape the rooflines. A few blocks north of here the streets give way to the East River, that grey, supple body with a prison rotting at its heart.

—a blue tide draws his hands through her abdomen   the body is a doorway it is not empty   he is tearing them from her even as she softens with departure   where did the air in the room go his hands are stained she is leaving him   just the stones so has he silenced forever that uncanny music—

I close my eyes and pray for two more centuries of a world that resembles this one.

KD: It’s 2267 and he is Earthside and jobless but painless. The tube they have just slept in is putting off a weird blue underwater light —don’t think about drowning— It doesn’t seem to have windows or doors.

Leeloo says his name in a voice he does not recognize. Is this love? He thinks his ears will never stop ringing.

Eve Strillacci lives and works in New York City, where she buys too many plants for the square footage and tries not to take calls on the subway. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, appearing in Sixth Finch, The Paris-American, and elsewhere.