Arti-5

It leaves you crying and thinking about what is happening to this crazy world. A powerful movie and it has nothing in common with "Elephant" because this one has nearly everything a good movie must have. Starting from the plot, actors playing and cameraman's work. And the music is wonderful-it's ideal for this kind of film. There are aggressive industrial melodies and they collide brilliantly with the tragic music like the one in the ending.

There are a lot of movies that leave you with the feeling that the "victim" in the film could have done something about his/her terrible situation. But here you feel that it's impossible to fight when you face total violence. You only have to fight for your honour and then you die being free. Of course, somebody can say that Joosep shouldn't have positioned himself as a cry-baby and could do something about that all. Well, I must say that all the people differ and good people not necessarily have to get used to the s**t around them. Something should be done with this world(I don't know what). The situation when you see only evil around you and you have no exit is terrifying and boys have got in that trap. Things like these happen everywhere in the world and that is what makes you lay crying after the movie-the feeling of this is shown very well here. 9 out of 10.

In the end, I must say that Estonia is deservedly a European country if they make such films and there are people who can look at the world from point like this. Unfortunately, we are still far from you. Everybody has problems like violence in schools and so on but still nobody can get rid of this. But if you throw light upon such problems,it's already a big step forward. When I say it all I don't mean America that makes violence a religion. I'm only speaking about Europe now.

It's difficult to judge about films like this. First of all, because if you're child of 90's it's hard to totally feel what life was like in 60's. And then, it's necessary to read the origin-the book and i didn't. But anyway..

This one deals with a lot of questions-social intentions and mental institutions, friendship and loneliness, suicide,absence of emotions and feelings and depression, life and death. It's rather close to me because someday I had feelings close to those that Susanna had. And still I'm not satisfied with the world around just like her. But I have the will to fight!

In my teenage years I thought that this was the story about unhappy, depressed and lonely people belonging to the generation "we are going nowhere" who are seeking the way out of it all. Now I realize that they're no more than crazy ones who couldn't deal with their problems themselves. While watching the movie we're trying to identify the strong and the weak ones in the story but actually everyone is weak there. If mental institution becomes your home because you got nowhere to go-this is not your misfortune,it's your fault. The world is s**t and your life totally s***s-yeah, I got the point. But why do you have to go to the clinic to make it better? What for do they show the world their unhappiness? Just to increase their popularity?

The explanation lies beneath-this is the story of the woman and about the women-just like the one in "Virgin suicides". That one is much darker because there the girls loved death more than everything. Here they don't love anything at all. The similarity is that in both movies the heroes are absolutely powerless against everything-and that is very,very strange.

It's all only my opinion. Life differs, and people differ too. That is why I kinda enjoyed this one and watched it just to get an experience and to think over all the important things of our life..and death.

Nowadays there are lots and lots of independent films, hundreds of directors who are trying to create something new and shocking for the spectator. Not all of them do it brilliantly but at least most of them are working in the right direction. Gus didn't choose the right direction. A smart movie that makes you think and nervously smoke after its ending doesn't consist only of original camera work and the atmosphere(there are exceptions,though,like David Lynch but he is a master and this is completely different thing). Elephant is an absolutely empty movie because there is nothing except boredom in it. Boredom that you can feel through the screen. It's both boredom of the film itself and the boring life of its characters. But people don't kill if they are bored. So can someone explain:why the hell those guys decided to kill everyone? Nothing that could make them do it was shown in this movie. It seems like they just lived and lived and then killed. That's absolutely absurd. There are also too much questions. What for did that TV program about Hitler was included in the picture? What did every person's hobby mean? What did it enlighten? What did Gus Van Sant wanted to say showing it all? If only the movie had at least a little explanation of youth's anger and their philosophy, their lifestyle, the serious things like that program could mean something. But they don't. Sometimes it seems that the director wants to throw light upon political and social problems but he doesn't show neither the things that led to those problems nor the way to get rid of them. And the thing that bothers me most:why did this film won Cannes Film Festival awards?! This is absolutely shocking for me. The film was considered to become the one for people who like serious cinematography but actually it's nothing more than a senseless amateur videotape.