Customer Reviews

Elephant [VHS]

5 star:		(117)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(40)
1 star:		(93)

 

 

Not many people saw this movie in theatres, which is probably a shame; I think the mood of the film would be enhanced by being trapped in your seat the entire time. Gus Van Sant takes advantage of the fact that you already know what his movie is about: a high school shooting. He uses your knowledge to his advantage by playing on the tension you inevitably feel as you wonder, "Will it happen now? Now? Now?" Framing his shots to limit your view, he lets you wonder, all through the movie, what is going on just outside the frame--and eventually forces you to think about how, if many of the kids you're watching would do the same and think about things outside of their own small worlds, the tragic end of the movie might never arrive. But the movie doesn't offer solutions nearly as neat and tidy as that; it simply allows a day to unfold before your eyes, lets you see the world as it's experienced by both the killers and their victims, and shows both how hard it is to see the signs that someone is capable of such a massacre and how easy it might be if people would only pay attention.

And then there's the kiss, which has caused Van Sant no small amount of frustration. Without ruining the tension for those of you who choose to give 80 minutes to this movie, I can tell you that at one point the two killers, about to head for school to act out their plan, get in the shower together--or does one ambush the other? I'm really not sure if the first occupant of the shower knows the second will join him; I don't think we're meant to think that this has happened before. But he walks in, joins his only friend, and says, "Today's the day we're going to die...I never even kissed anyone, did you?" Then the two friends, alienated by the rest of the world, are kissing; the shot lingers long enough to make it clear this is more than a quick kiss goodbye--more like an extended, naked make-out session in the shower.

And then it's over, and the rest of the movie unfolds, including one event, which I'd love to discuss with anyone who sees it, that made me reinterpret the whole friendship between the two killers and their individual reactions to what happens in the shower.

I've made this movie sound like it's filled with action, which isn't fair to those who might consider watching it; much of the 80-minute length of the film is ordinary stuff, like walking down long hallways and playing football and developing film and playing the piano, and much of this plays out without dialogue. I was proud of myself at the end for not speeding up the movie to get down those hallways or get that film developed and clipped; the slight boredom I felt gave my dread an opportunity to build. In the end, this is not an easy film; it won't tell you what you should think about it, and you may not be able to decide on your own what to think, either. I know I haven't. But I'm thinking about it, and that's got to count for something.

In ELEPHANT, director Gus Van Sant provides us with a day in the life of a high school, seen literally from the perspective of several students. Life in high school is presented realistically as boring. Some people have good times; others don't. Even the awkward girl isn't given many scenes to generate sympathy for her character. As a viewer, you don't really get to know much about any of the characters. You see that some of them are talented. Some of them are troubled. Some of them are just going through the motions.

Going into the film, you should be aware that a shooting will happen on this day. But, while watching it, you don't know when it's going to happen, who's going to do it, who's going to live or who's going to die. But the sense of dread you get builds as the film goes along.

Once the film identifies the shooters, we get a brief glimpse of their home life. We see how they got the guns. We get only an idea of the sort of video games they play, the films they watch, the drawings they've created. (The only real elephant seen in the film is a drawing that one of the killers has done and placed on his wall. He doesn't talk about it. We just see it.) We see one of them is a really good piano player. We see that he gets occasionally picked on by bullies, but we don't get the sense that he's overcome with a need for vengeance. We see the killers speak of the last day of their lives, and they kiss. We don't know if it's the first time they have done this. We don't know if they're gay or straight. I got the sense that this is the only time that they'll get a chance to kiss anyone, so they kiss each other. (Van Sant himself is gay, which I think is key. He's not suggesting that gay people are killers. But he's not saying that the killers in his film weren't repressed homosexuals, either. In the scene, he's saying that homosexuality alone cannot be seen as a reason for the violence.) No real motive is provided by the film itself, but you get hints of what actions other people will blame after the fact.

The film, in this extended scene outside of the school moreso than any other, shows the point that the filmmaker intends - that there is no way to determine the causes of this sort of violence and that there are no messages or clearly defined "heroes" and "villains" within such violence. Van Sant supplies the audience with a glimpse of several things that will be examined and dissected by others in the community within the film in the aftermath of the violence.

But, in taking us inside the school during the shooting, he shows us that it is random, brutal, unmotivated and cold violence. It has no reasons or explanations, because nothing this tragic can be blamed on any one thing. The killers even deserve some consideration because they're children, just like the other victims.

The film is excellent and thought-provoking, though it's bleak and sad.

Elephant was a little too "real" for many tastes. I didn't enjoy the film as I watched it the first time, but thought van Sant did (as always) a terrific job presenting what he wanted to present - if not necessarily my type of movie. The film hasn't left me and the more I think about it - and rewatch it, the better it becomes.

Initially I felt the sense of ennui was a tad overdone watching the back of a student's head as he slowly moves from point A to point B - sometimes for endless minutes on end the camera will not break from that vantage point - the back of a head. The point seemed made both literally and succinctly the first time. Nonetheless, this device frees the narrative and affords van Sant opportunity to move his film in non-linear directions so the glimpse of a face unseen earlier is now viewed in full relief, a snatch of conversation previously heard comes into focus - even if briefly.

There are elements of the film that are touching and keenly observant. While van Sant has typically focused on youth for his body of work, these elements are evident in all ages but noticeably and most strongly pronounced in youth, those hormone filled, confusing years where, completely unbeknownst to us, its victims, life is pretty much going to be the same, and one can change high school for the factory, the hospital, the law firm, the insurance company or wherever you spend your days and those with whom you spend them.

As with life, some characters will stay with you, some you'd wish to know better, others (the three bulimic girlfriends) who natter on endlessly about nothing - and whose existence one forgets entirely - until the next encounter.

There is more than a little heartbreak in Elephant. Watching Alex pelted with spitballs made me cringe with remorse. There is little reason to understand why Alex, and his sort of friend Eric, are losers. There is outwardly no reason they don't fit in, something we see in everyday life: people arbitrarily shunned because as a society we simply need people to be excluded. As the boys share a shower and prepare for the shooting spree - and death - Eric's statement "I've never even kissed anyone" resounds with a loneliness that is shattering.

Had I written this review upon first watching Elephant I would've given it two stars. Seeing it again, and thinking and talking about it lots, earns it 5.

There is an old Hindu legend about six blind men who come upon an elephant. One thought the elephant like a wall, the second like a spear, the third thought it a snake, number four a tree, five a fan, and six thought the elephant like a rope. They bickered and argued over who was right, when each could only experience the elephant from his own perspective. (click here for the poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant: http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html)

Last night, I viewed Gus Van Sant's 2003 film Elephant. Van Sant is the directory of Good Will Hunting, one of my favorite movies, as well as director of Finding Forrester (for a classic Sean Connery line, go to http://www.yourethemannowdog.com/ and turn the volume up). Elephant is Van Sant's look at a typical high school day from the eyes of a handful of students, except that it is not a typical day. As an attempt at realism, we do not see "real" actors, but rather, real high school students, told to create their own dialogue, and simply allow the camera to follow them.

We open with a car swerving around the neighborhood before abruptly crash stopping in front blond haired John, to the tune of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata in the background. John makes his obviously drunk father hand over the keys and switch to the passenger seat, so that he may drive himself to school. The camera follows John as he walks around school, leaving behind the background sonata that graced our journey to a day of learning. John's travels include stopping to pose for Elias, another student and an amateur photographer, receiving a kiss on the cheek from Acadia during a sad moment, and leaving the building as Alex and Eric are about to enter, carrying heavy bags. We receive an ominous sign with Alex's warning to John, "Get the [heck] out and don't come back! Some heavy [stuff]'s going down!"

Our next guide is Elias, photographing a gothic couple on his walk to school, developing a roll in water in the school's lab, and stopping blond haired John, and requesting he pose for some photographs. We also see football star Nathan leave practice, walk down the hall to the notice of three admiring girls, before meeting up with girlfriend Carrie. They have a lot to talk about, and the camera makes sure we witness. There is Michelle, in sadness walking down the hallway, walking by Nathan before he meets up with Carrie. We meet three girls, noticing Nathan walking towards Carrie, disgusted that he is taken. Through the windows we can see John leaving school and Alex and Eric walking toward the doors. The three girls will have lunch and throw up in the bathroom, Michelle will receive a talking to from a teacher about refusing to wear gym class shorts. We see Eric get picked on, and Alex sit at his piano to break the long musical silence in the film with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Everyone has problems and hurts. Everyone is in emotional flux. We may look upon their problems as petty or small, but to a teenager in transition, small things really can affect one's emotional well-being. If anything, for those who have forgotten, we are reminded that high school is not an easy time.

From the first frame, we can sense that something seems wrong, even in a seemingly ordinary day. The relatively early glimpse of Alex and Eric alerts us to what will transpire. Yet, our anticipation and angst are never met with an explanation before the final scene of violence erupts. No explanation is given. We do not come to an understanding. In naming his film Elephant, Van Sant could be saying that there is no answer, explanation, or solution to horrendous acts such as these. Like in the parable above, each blind man experiences the elephant from his own perspective. We all see things differently. In order to find a cure, first we must have a correct diagnosis to the illness. What is the "illness" that causes troubled youth to engage in acts of school violence? Van Sant throws his hands up. He does not know. All of the characters we meet have problems, so why did these two end up being the ones? Some of the characters we meet die and some do not, yet we do not see a reason why. We are left with the Moonlight Sonota and no closure.

"Elephant" is Gus Van Sant's brilliant and mind-blowing distillation of teenage alienation and angst. Set on one of those sterile suburban high school campuses, the film recounts a typical day in the life of a school - typical that is until it ends in a Columbine-type massacre.

Here is a film in which style does indeed become substance, where the "meaning" lies in the form and shape of the film itself. Rather than tell us a conventional "story," Van Sant has chosen to give his film the look and feel of a pseudo-documentary, merely recording the events and conversations that occur that day, a day we are led to believe is not unlike every other at that school. Van Sant's prying camera eye turns us into voyeurs, as we observe the cliquishness, petty humiliations, and sheer overwhelming banality that have defined high school life for so many of us. Van Sant uses space brilliantly. Despite the fact that this is undoubtedly a school with a large student population, the characters on whom he focuses seem always to be somehow isolated from almost everyone else around them. None of the characters we see really seem to have any connection with one another, and even when they do, it tends to be of only the most superficial kind. They are like people stranded on their own individual islands, enduring their suffering alone and in silence. Van Sant sets the tone with his tracking shots of characters strolling down seemingly endless corridors heading to nowhere in particular, making little or no human contact as they go. The camera, throughout the film, seems to have a mind of its own, often avoiding what seems to be a major plot point and, instead, zeroing in on something that seems to have little or no real importance. Then through the process of editing, he weaves nothing less than a tapestry of alienation. By concentrating so intently on the seemingly irrelevant minutia of daily life, Van Sant brings to the film a sense of documentary immediacy most fiction films lack. We are made privy to bits and pieces of conversation only to have the talk dribble off as we or the characters turn the corner and move on to the next group of people. It is the deadening "sameness," the insignificance of so much of what we see and hear that makes this such a sad and haunting experience.

One thing Van Sant refuses to do is try to "explain" why the killers act as they do. He's smart enough to know that there is no single explanation for such behavior, that it arises from a variety of sources and that it is primarily the product of a general feeling of alienation in modern society. We see one of the murderers suffering humiliation at the hands of two schoolmates, the second killer playing a violent video game and perusing a gun magazine, but these, in and of themselves, cannot be the sole explanations. At best they are symptoms of a much deeper societal sickness, one that Van Sant can only hint at but never fully grasp - for who among us can claim to truly understand it? What "Elephant" does is to make us focus on and actually see this spirit-crushing ennui which permeates our culture and which defines life for so many of our youngsters.

The director has drawn fine work from his cast of talented unknowns. Their every word, their every gesture rings believable and true. He has also employed Beethoven's "Fur Elise" to serve as a haunting refrain throughout the film, capturing the poignancy of a world in which beauty, spontaneity and joy seem to have been removed.

There are some who will find "Elephant" to be slow-moving, empty, arty and pretentious. For them there are plenty of mindlessly upbeat depictions of high school life to watch. But for those who can appreciate a film artist working at the peak of his form, "Elephant" is a mesmerizing, vision-altering experience that pushes the boundaries of the medium and takes us to a place, emotionally, that we haven`t ever been before.

Van Sant's too hip to tell a story or offer explanations or motivations. His long, beautiful shots of boys walking around are set to Beethoven to show how touching young men are, and how troubled. It's a poem, sort of, to male teenage angst. These boys walk away from the viewer, down the empty hallways of high school and adolescence, always turning their faces from us, always hiding their sensitivity and pain. Suggestive shots include a janitor mopping behind one walker, erasing his footsteps. Another shows boys playing a violent video game after one becomes frustrated practicing piano. Get it?

Toward the end, a couple of them take a shower together, then shoot up a high school.

It's atmospheric and deliberate, and by no means awful, it just doesn't do much. Despite the repitition of one scene from different points of view, you'll never think you're watching Kurosawa or Tarrantino. Not as excrable as "Kids" or as masterful as "River's Edge," it's finally just Van Sant's arty meditation on high school boys.

Whatever.

Elephant is an understated, incredibly haunting film account of how the day of the Columbine shootings might have progressed.

With long, amazingly detailed and subtle steadicam shots (most several minutes in length), director Gus Van Sant follows his cast of characters through their typical daily school lives. Although some reviewers may call this tactic "boring", I think they're missing the point entirely. This isn't a subject or a story that requires quick cuts and shaky character development to tell.

What Van Sant manages to do is to show, in a beautifully tragic way, just how ordinary the school day was, and how surprising and explosive the events really were or could be.

Following the long shots, at several points overlapping from different angles and different characters, the audience begins to create a visual image of all the activity occuring on a school campus at any given time. The understated performances by all the young actors add another layer of perfection to the film by making it all feel painfully realistic.

When the shooting finally does start, in the last 10 minutes of the film, it's almost like the viewer has been lulled into a false sense of security, much like the students in the school have been. Overall, this film is terrifically and tastefully done and it's definitely worth watching whether you're interested in Columbine or not. Elephant is just good filmmaking.

The DVD is 2-sided with the feature on one side and special features on the other. The special features are pretty weak. There's a making of featurette, but it's pretty much the worst making of I've ever seen. There's no discussion from the director on what he was trying to do or say, there's a few different cast members describing what their definition of violence is... other than that it's just shots of them making the film.

I think I was in the right space now for watching the film, for I found it beautifully filmed, well acted, and altogether insightful in its experimental approach to the violence underlying western American culture in the present day. In the wake of Columbine and other high school shootings, today's kids live in an atmosphere of fear, and sudden death spares no one, not even the most beautiful and stylish. I guess high school has always been about fear (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER had it right), but add guns to the mixture and you have a situation in which the bullied can finally strike back. Va Sant takes a measured approach to this quasi-revolutionary thesis, doubling back again and again from a crucial hallway confrontation (between Eli and John, as Eli takes what might be the very last photo ever taken of the lad) as if to prohibit us from deciding that aha, that's why they did it!

So that we keep seeing this apparently simple scene more than once, not on a rote basis either, but the film returns to it at unexpected cadenzas, never when you might guess it was happening. Similarly the characters are "introduced" (by their names, in the sort of intertitles you'd see in silent films) at different lengths of time following their visual introductions. There's a free jazz timing behind each production decision, and it's pretty exhilarating. Yes, there are some horrid, cliched scenes in the script. The three girls all throwing up at the same time seem to have stepped out of a satire like MEAN GIRLS; but up until that moment their interchange, and the agonistic byplay among the three, as one tries to break free of a slavish friendship, had been nearly lifelike and never boring (an extensive De Palma esque continuous moving shot sees them warily circling the cafeteria like hummingbirds).

Van Sant begins the movie with a painful sequence in which John makes his dad pull over, too drunk to drive, and take the wheel himself, and he casts the redoubtable US actor Joseph Bottoms to play the part of the dad, thus clearly signalling a tip of the hat to the 1970s "New American Cinema" in which Bottoms had played such a crucial part (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW; JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN; LOVE AND PAIN AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING). All of a sudden, the opening tells us, a lineage shows itself, ancestry asserts itself. Youth grows old, despite what happens in the rest of the movie.

I have seen this film twice.

With that said, initially I found this film (or remembered it to be) quite powerful and artistically made. However, after seeing this movie for a second time (which occurred years later), my thoughts on this movie have changed drastically.

Years do make all the difference apparently, because the second viewing allowed me to see past the initial shock value of the film, and analyze for what it says, or does not say. In regards to message, Gus Van Sant appears to be saying that violence has no reason, and is illogical at best. I would tend to agree with this.

However, one must then ask, why did Van Sant decide to make this film at all? The answer must certainly be to shock and move viewers into deep afterthought, in regards to our society, and school violence.

This would be fine, and even possible, if the film were not so artificial. The truth is, I tried hard the second time to appreciate the film, but being a little bit older and wiser enabled me to see right through the cliched "high school dialogue." Why is every kid in the school talking about something negative? Where are the kids just talking amongst friends, having a good time?

Gus Van Sant appears to be living in some altered reality, in which high school is always bleak and depressing.

Surely, teenagers never have it too easy, and the period of high school is often a difficult, tumultuous one at times, but in the end, Van Sant fails at depicting a remotely "normal" high school experience.

Because of these unrealistic conversations sparking off everywhere in the school, by the time the two school shooters enter into the equation, nothing seems too shocking. Viewers have been expecting it all along, and since nothing was "normal" beforehand, the shock is minimal. Had Van Sant countered the shootings with an even slightly happier school setting, the violence by the end would have been that much more powerful.

Basically, viewers can feel no true emotion towards the characters in the film, for they are lifeless and bland. Even the school shooters themselves are absurdly cliched, finding themselves ordering weapons from a website called "GunsUSA" (or some site to that extent). Pointless, cheesy detail like that really ruined the movie for me.

While I'm at it, I'll mention that Van Sant does have an interesting way of filming. This perhaps is one of the mildly redeeming qualities of Elephant. Long, drawn out shots of dimly lit hallways emphasize the bleakness of the situation. Had Van Sant left the gloom of the film to the camera alone, instead of to the dialogue, Elephant could have been a much different, and better, movie.

As everybody knows, this film was inspired by the Columbine High School Massacre that took place in Columbine, Colorado, 1999.

The film does not have a classic plot. It simply follows the last minutes of a group of high school kids before two of them enter the school "armed to the teeth" and start shooting anything that moves. Some of them get killed. Some will survive.

Simple as that.

But the film is more than JUST that.

FIRST, it is a very inventive narrative exercise as we follow several characters' point of view whose path crosses other characters' paths we previously have seen. At one time, you'll get the idea the screenplay is constructing a big puzzle that will only be complete when the shooting begins - which it does.

SECOND, I found those characters fascinating. Even without a plot, Gus Van Sant is able to touch us with the unique experience of some characters. The first five minutes or so, when John (played by the beautiful John Robinson), a kid whose father seems to be an alcoholic, cries without knowing why is very eloquent and clear about the unseen inside of those characters.

THIRD, there is an ambiance of... it's hard to describe... loneliness, isolation, inner disorder... that we only find in the best horror/thriller films. And strangely enough we find it here, in a film like this (not horror nor a thriller). In fact, I believe anyone interested such genres, should take a look at this film and be amazed.

FOURTH: the film really gets your attention in the end, when the whole thing happens... randomly, unexpectedly...

In retrospect, I think this is one the most important works of the decade and, in a certain way, it says a lot about today's youth in America: beautiful when it's beautiful and really monstrous when it goes downhill.

As a non-American (I'm in Europe), two scenes stuck me like lightning (for obvious reasons): the one when the three girls go vomit after lunch (I wasn't expecting that one! - laughs) and the one where two boys order a fire weapon by mail and get their kicks from shooting chopped wood in a garage.

That scene alone should make America rethink its attitude about guns... or some day such attitude might rethink America.