In this blog post, we briefly explore the meaning of the power of love portrayed in the film The Fifth Element in real life and reflect on the values we may be overlooking.
Life is given to everyone only once. Therefore, no one would want to waste this one chance. For beings living within limited time, the question of value judgment inevitably arises, and in such moments, priorities become crucial. Life itself is a finite span of time, and if priorities matter, then life will change depending on what we place value on first. In this blog post, we’ll explore what the most important value might be, drawing from the classic film The Fifth Element.
If asked what matters most in life, some might answer ‘money’. In modern society, money’s power is undeniable; its influence is impossible to ignore. Similar to money is ‘power’. Power is essentially strength forged within society, and possessing it clearly offers advantages for a more comfortable life. However, for those with a certain level of higher education, money and power, while recognized for their substance and strength, feel somewhat worldly to pursue. Korea, in its rapid industrialization and globalization, pursued these things to live comfortably, but many failed. Amid the difficulties of the IMF crisis, those who tasted bitterness due to material possessions and power sought to live truly happy lives. Thus, the value chosen by many living in 2024 is none other than a ‘positive mindset’. Even globally popular books like The Secret (Rhonda Byrne) or The Vitamin of Laughter (Choi Yoon-hee) seem to convey the message that success in life can ultimately be achieved through a positive mindset. However, the suicide of Choi Yoon-hee, who seemed to be at the pinnacle of this happiness, was an event that raised the thought that a positive mindset might not be the ultimate value.
Upon hearing of this incident, the film that came to mind and prompted me to watch it again was Luc Besson’s first sci-fi work, The Fifth Element (1997). Though quite an old film, it left a deep impression on me at the time and was immensely entertaining. The message of ‘love’ conveyed in this film breaks the postmodernist notion that nothing can be absolutely the best, making you realize that love is truly an important value.
The plot isn’t overly complex. The emergence of the ‘ultimate evil’—a force prophesied and prepared for thousands of years ago, destined to annihilate all life—presents an insurmountable catastrophe for those living in the future society of 2259. However, the ‘Mon-Doshans’, who had prepared weapons in advance for this purpose, return to Earth where the weapons are installed to confront the emergence of the Absolute Evil. During this process, their spaceship crashes due to a group acting on the Absolute Evil’s orders, and only one arm survives and is rescued.
After the crash, the surviving arm is regenerated into a ‘perfect’ woman thanks to the advanced technology of the future. However, this woman (Leeloo) is not a Mondoshawan, but ‘The Fifth Element’—the key entity needed to activate the weapon. She seeks out a priest named ‘Cornelius’ (Ian Holm), who was entrusted with passing on knowledge by the Mondoshawans in the past, and in the process, she meets ‘Coben Dallas’ (Bruce Willis). Coben Dallas was once the top federal agent and the last federal agent, but he had retired and was now working as a taxi driver. He falls for her through his fateful encounter with Leeloo.
The weapon the Mondoshawans installed on Earth is powered by ‘elements’. It activates when the four elements—water, fire, wind, and earth—surround the fifth element. The Mondoshawan had entrusted these four elements to trustworthy beings, but upon learning of their existence and location, the Federation government recalled Coben and assigned him the mission to retrieve the elements.
Ultimately, the elements fall into the hands of the protagonists and they return to Earth where the weapon is installed. However, despite being placed according to the theory, the weapon fails to activate. However, the moment the wounded and life-skeptical Leeloo learns about love through Korben, the weapon activates, stopping the ultimate evil and protecting life, leading to a happy ending.
Let’s return to the scene before the weapon activated. Even with all five elements in place, the weapon remains inactive. The reason is that the five elements must be ‘opened’ for the weapon to function. When no one knows how to open the elemental stones, they ask Leeloo, The Fifth Element. She says, “The wind blows, the fire burns, the rain falls…” As everyone ponders, a sigh blows into the stone symbolizing wind, opening it. The four stones open as their respective attributes take effect. Wind requires wind, earth requires earth, water requires water, fire requires fire. Seeing the elements open in this way suggests the concept of ‘opening’ also applies to the Fifth Element. It can be seen that what opened the Fifth Element was Koben Dallas’s love. If we adopt the concept that “the element that opens the element is the element itself,” we can understand that the perfect and absolute good, The Fifth Element, which the director sought to express, is love.
Having understood that the film asserts the importance of love, we now turn to examining what kind of love the film portrays. Assuming that, given the film’s structure, no scene inserted by the director is meaningless to the overall story, let us assign meaning to several scenes.
The first is the perfection of love. In a phone call with his friend, the protagonist Korben is told by ‘Finger’ (Korben’s friend) that there are plenty of women in the world, so he should forget about his wife. Korben replies, “I don’t need millions of women. I just need one perfect one.” What we should consider here is how people behave when they fall in love. Lovers often express it as “feeling like they have the whole world.” It’s a bit of an awkward phrase, but it’s true. When you’re in love, it’s a state where no part of life feels lacking. If the expression “perfect” in the film, appearing several times, is interpreted as The Fifth Element and as love, then substituting love for Coben’s ‘perfect’ leads to the conclusion: “Love is all I need.”
The second thing we see is that love is irresistible. This is also evident in the phone call scene between Korben and Finger. While telling Finger about his meeting with Leeloo, Korben uses the expression, “You know… a guest you absolutely cannot refuse.” While the idiomatic meaning of this phrase might be difficult to grasp within Korean cultural contexts, knowing the film’s ending makes it undeniably an apt expression about love. Simply put, externally speaking, once love begins, any external dissuasion becomes futile. Internally, when love approaches, even if you know you shouldn’t, you’ve likely experienced falling for it anyway. Without love for something else, resisting this temptation is nearly impossible.
Thirdly, love proves more fragile than expected. The heroine, Riru, is highly intelligent and skilled in combat. She can defeat dozens of Mangalo with her bare hands. Yet, she gets injured by Joge in a way that seems absurdly easy. In a scene where Coven speaks about Riru, he says, “When has she ever not been in danger?” While most of Coven’s encounters with Riru in the film’s context were indeed crisis situations, this line carries profound meaning when reflecting on love. Consider the love between lovers: love is never a solitary endeavor, which is why it’s difficult. We often find love wavering at the slightest doubt about the other person or a minor flaw that displeases us. Love is truly strong and perfect, yet paradoxically, it can also be fragile enough to vanish like a mirage in an instant. The fiery state of love, in other words, is a state that can cool and fall like a stone at any moment.
The film also expresses various critiques of society beneath the surface of a simple love story. The first thing we see is the image of a society that has lost true love. Contrasting with Coben’s assertion that one perfect love is enough is the widespread notion of finding satisfaction in the women scattered throughout the world. It cannot be denied that the reality of modern love is often about relationships for pleasure or marrying for status and background rather than true love.
The second element is the breakdown of communication within the family. A character appears in the film only through her voice—Coben’s mother. She calls because of the travel voucher Coben obtained for his mission. While space prevents a detailed analysis, the conversation between Coben and his mother doesn’t seem particularly comfortable. If we consider that scenes seemingly dispensable were crafted with intent, this scene can be seen as the director denouncing distorted love within the parent-child relationship.
Beyond this, the film offers satire on political criticism, abuse of power, and commercialism cloaked in honor, but setting that aside, it allows us to glimpse the problems arising where the essence of love is broken. Looking at the types of love circulating online, we find ‘Eros’ (romantic love between men and women), ‘Storge’ (family love), ‘Philia’ (friendship), and ‘Agape’ (divine love and universal human compassion). While the concept of ‘philia’ was difficult to find, easily thought of as friendship, the other concepts of love were visible through the film. And this reveals the director’s regret for an ideal society, as these concepts were distorted through the lens of a society that had lost its original form.
Now we must restore these kinds of love. The restoration of love doesn’t begin far away, but right beside us. The film suggests that the love between Coven and Liru prevented the world’s destruction. Perhaps this implies that change in the world begins with loving the ‘one person’ right beside us. Many problems modern society faces could be resolved if love within us—love for those beside us, for family, for all humanity—were restored. Of course, some problems seem too difficult to solve with love alone. This is because, even in the film, the elements of water, fire, wind, and earth were necessary for the weapon to function. Yet the importance of love, which unifies all these realms into a complete weapon, cannot be denied. Because society is made up of people. The various virtues stemming from love for others—acts like consideration, for instance—form the foundation of desirable solutions. In other words, I believe that for any alternative solution to a societal problem to be truly complete, love must be at its core. Love for one’s partner, for family, for friends, and for humanity… I hope we can now abandon the selfish love centered on the self and restore genuine love. And I hope that within such love, we can build a society where many people can truly enjoy happiness.
