Gus Van Sant's most compelling work - you can't look and yet you also can't look away
Added 10/27/2009
A powerful testament to how the world can go upside down at any moment and how unexpected life is, Elephant portrays the events at Columbine High School. Yet, that school is never mentioned and, really, these events could've taken place everywhere at any time. The movie starts off deliberately slow and follows each character as they go about their mundane daily tasks; the camera never leaves each character, switching only between characters. The value of these ordinary moments is given even higher priority when one realizes that the movie is only 1.5 hrs long. The normalcy of the tasks is so boring, in fact, that one almost screams for something more to happen. Shamefully, it does and that's when the movie truly manages to astonish the viewer. The shootings are overwhelming, of course, but it's the raw nature of their portrayal and the unapologetic nature of the characters that shocks the viewer. Unlike other movies, Elephant doesn't want to provide excuses or lay blame; instead, the movie carefully plays out the events in the schools eyes, through characters familiar and newly-introduced characters in the last moments of their lives. The movie's impact is simply undeniable - one can't help but look with apprehension and a further confusion as to the actual proceedings of the tragedy in real life.
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I'm shocked. Talented director, compelling subject, I thought for sure this movie would be a great one.
Added 5/27/2009
Here's the deal. I enjoy most of Gus Van Sant's films. (Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho, Finding Forrester, etc.) I also think the subject of Columbine -- which is basically what this film is based on -- makes for a great film if done right. But somewhere, this movie went horribly awry and it came across so slow and shallow, that by the end I felt terrible because all I wanted to do was fast forward to the violent and sad ending we all knew was coming.
When the film begins, it introduces two kids who I assumed were the school shooters. It evens stops to show us a black text screen with their name. But nope, they're just typical kids having a fun day at school. So as we gradually see more kids, who also get their own text introductions, I'm thinking that the film is going to be all about the victims of the school with very little attention paid to the shooters. I can dig that. Sounds like a great idea. Really now, who wants to give any more attention than necessary to the sick puds who did this, and if you don't show their faces, it adds even more suspense to the tragic ending. The only problem is through 2 hours of film we DON'T GET TO KNOW these kids. Gus Van Sant has some wierd fetish throughout the whole film with copying Scorsese's famous travelling shot of Ray Liotta in Goodfellas and I swear to god.. there are AT LEAST 5 scenes in this movie that take a few minutes as the camera follows a high school kid who just walk the halls and says hi to a few people. If that! Most of these scenes are just five minute clips that allow us to check out the detail of the lockers or the wood floor of the basketball court. Yes, exciting stuff! It doesn't help us understand these kids any better, it really doesn't even help us learn what the school looks like since it's just one generic looking typical high school. Most of scenes about typical high school life that lead up to the doomsday ending are pure pointless camera liberties that move so slow -- like mentioned before -- all I want is some flipping action. There's so little dialogue and examination of the victims, maybe the most interesting kids in the entire two hour sludge are the three valley girls who go in to the restroom simultaneously to puke their lunch out. Actually they win "most interesting" by default because they're the only ones with more than a few lines of dialogue, even if it is teen gossip. The only logical conclusion I can guess through all of this is that Van Sant was trying to make us realize it was just a normal peaceful high school and a regular day, but I got the same message in five seconds from news headlines. I didn't need to see two hours of Columbine's most boring mundane classroom moments dramatized.
So halfway through the film, as I realize it's not going to let me relate to the kids in the school, suddenly we're introduced to the inevitable killers. So now I'm thinking: "Good, maybe this is going to be an in-depth analysis of the crazy nuts who did this dirty deed. I'd rather see the victims, but at least I have some point to this movie." Yes, we see a few scenes of them at home, but it's about as cliched as they come. Every scene is a snapshot of something we heard in the news just to establish that yes, they are the Columbine killers. There's a clip of them playing violent video games. There's a clip of them target shooting. There's a scene with them getting picked on by the school bully. In an odd twist, there's even a gay scene between the two killers, which I have no idea where that came from. The scenes about the killers make them as artificial as can be, and if you REALLY want to know what was going on in their minds, I recommend you read that new book Columbine by Dave Cullen which goes underneath the false media stereotypes and researches their psychotic pesonalities that more than anything allowed them to commit this massacre.
So what do we have? A boring, pointless movie. No attempt to plunge into the psyche of the people involved -- victim or killer. No attempt to add drama that makes it worth two hours. No attempt to deeply research Columbine and give us anything more than what we hear at water cooler talk. May the film critic god strike me down, but I think I even had a better time with the cheeseball Justin Timberlake piece, Alpha Dog, which was another teen angst murder story based on actual events. Here's the truth: If you want the best look at Columbine I've seen to date, check out the Discovery Channel series entitled Zero Hour and their one-hour episode on Columbine. More involving, a better look at the actual events involved, and sadly, even better actors. I haven't seen Gus Van Sant's latest teen murder flick Paranoid Park, but I have the same "this has gotta be better than the reviews" feeling about it that I did Elephant. Hopefully, Paranoid Park won't let me down.
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I was expecting more
Added 5/14/2009
Maybe this movie just wasn't what I expected. I expected a day in the life of a typical high school, during which I get to know different students and try to look for clues about who might feel tortured enough to drive them to the inevitable tragedy we know is coming.
I never felt like I really got to know or care about many of the students featured in the movie. Most of the time the camera is on the back of their heads, following them as they walk around (for full minutes at a time...it became not only boring, but comical). This may be useful for depicting the day as typical, but it's not great for helping the audience understand the characters. I felt the use of interwoven story lines to be much more interesting. Still, many of the interactions don't shed much light on the characters either. It didn't help that most of the acting was so poor. (Most of the actors were amateurs, and it shows.) When we reach the school shooting scenes, any emotion is due more to the graphic nature of the killings than any attachment to specific characters.
You can tell pretty early on who the culprits will be. There are no conclusions as to why they did it (a move called "gutsy" by many reviewers...to me it seemed more like a cop out).
Ultimately, this movie is an hour of watching people walk around, followed by a graphic reenactment of Columbine.
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No Characterization and Flawed
Added 5/1/2009
This is why I think this movie is trash (sorry, I am usually very reserved).
1. Pretentious
2. No characterization
3. Lack of psychological insight
I rented this movie based on Gus Van Sant's reputation and the synopsis attracts me. I do not rate this movie one star because it couldn't live up to its promise, but because everything is done wrong.
The direction is what you'd call an art house movie. But an "art" ought to get someone to think, and this one doesn't. The movie is a juxtaposition of various pretty pictures without some coherent meaning.
Maybe I just don't get it. Example, when John slapped his butt for a photo shoot, it was ingenious the first time, but after the third time, it gets old. In poetry, if a message is repeated, it must mean something or to reinforce some idea. But I'm sorry, I don't get how John slapped his own butt is a symbol of anything. Bottom line: cut the crap out in the editing room.
Whoever did the music design ought to be guillotined. Why Moonlight Sonata? How does it enhance the mood of the movie? But none of that really matter as long as it does not overrides the background ambiance, which brilliantly brings out the atmosphere of the school, whereas the music score falls short on it. Discordance, yes, but why do it when John entered the school. Was he the villain who disrupts the school? Incorrect usage of motif. F for music design.
Given Gus Van Sant's reputation is built on gay coming of age story, I don't blame him for choosing some nice looking boys in his movies (though I think it's a little exploitative a la Andy Warhol). But what is their purpose in the movie if their characters are not developed? Was John a hero? Were Eric and Alex villains or anti-heroes? No clear sense of direction.... What's Eric's and Alex's motive to go on a rampage? Were they bullied? I didn't see that in the movie, but I get the cue maybe John was and was misunderstood by the principal. Why didn't he go on a rampage? Erm..., maybe because people don't snap like that easily? Why Columbine and other school massacres happened? Did production team discuss any of the possibilities why Alex and Eric would want to kill people like that? Did they ask the young actors who played the roles? This is not a pretty picture with no substance, is it? (sorry, that's a rhetorical question)
The characterization is as vague as the question, are Alex and Eric gay? You get to see them kiss, but you don't know if they are gay or not. Maybe it's just a goodbye kiss, or maybe they're just emos without the makeup. If they were lovers, how could Alex kill Eric like that? If they were bullied in school and depend on each other to cope with the situation, how COULD they do that? Characterization: F minus.
A movie like this should offer possible explanation that'll get people to think about the issue, and this one merely feeds the public with preexisting stereotype. It contains no psychological insight as to why bad things happened. This is NOT art. This is pretension.
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Poignant and Haunting
Added 2/19/2009
It goes without saying: this film is not for those with abnormally short attention spans, or anybody whose idea of great cinema is "Transporter 2." However, anybody keen on Tarkovsky or some of Kubrick's more languorous pictures shouldn't have any problem giving Elephant the time of day it deserves.
This is a film that sticks in the mind because of its utter reality; although the direction is heavily stylized, the conversations, vocal inflections, everyday encounters, and so forth that occur in the film are banal (read: realistic) as can be. The scruffy kids that roam the halls in Elephant's high school are not at all unlike people the viewer might've known during their own time in the same place, which makes the events of the film all the more poignant.
Nothing really "happens" in Elephant, leading up to the tragic shooting; that is, nothing relative to the big action and constant revelations of your typical Hollywood flick. But the random conversations and normal occurances are moving, because the viewer knows all hell is about to strike loose, as well as because these people seem seem so normal, and human.
A particularly memorable scene is one in which the camera pans slowly across the killer Alex's room as he plays Fur Elise on the piano and his friend (the other killer) idles away on the computer. The combination of the hauntingly beautiful music, with the camera pan revealing what seems to be just another suburban teenage boy's bedroom, when he is of course anything but, is truly chilling.
Elephant doesn't make any declarative statements about why people kill, or what we can do to stop it. It simply glides along, following the miniscule daily trials and tribulations of a handful of high school kids, culminating, unexpectedly for them, in tragedy. Above all, Elephant is a triumph of superb directorial vision; beautifully shot and executed, with a fluid style that could aptly be termed "visual poetry." After you've seen the film, those long Steadicam shots stalking the doomed students through idle school hallways will haunt your memory forever.
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