Elephant

I saw Elephant when it was first broadcast on BBC TV in 1989. There was a certain amount of hoo-ha about it, as the BBC had already put it back for a few months - films about the North of Ireland were, and are, touchy subjects. Watching it is riveting. The complete absence of story, dialogue and explanation serves to bring home the fact that, after all the talk and propaganda and fine words about freeing Ireland from the British oppressors or defending Ulster from the filthy Taigs, killing is killing - people are dying, frequently and horribly, and can there ever be a "reason" for it? I grew up in sheltered south Dublin and witnessed the Troubles at second-hand, filtered through the language of journalism; Elephant brought home to me, in the most visceral way, the relentless insanity of the situation. The film should be compulsory viewing in UK and Irish schools.

The major criticism of Elephant is that it's too simple - that the lack of context and explanation aren't enough. But the serial nature of it, muder after murder after murder, have an unforgettable power. It's not meant to be an attempt at the overall picture; it's a cry of horror against an appalling situation. I saw it once, ten years ago, and have never forgotten it.

It was directed by the late Alan Clarke, undoubtedly the best director of TV Britain has ever seen (maybe the best British director since Michael Powell). He had already given early breaks to Tim Roth (in Made in Britain) and Gary Oldman (in The Firm - not the Tom Cruise vehicle, but a brutal TV movie about soccer hooliganism). The title comes from the writer Bernard MacLaverty, who said that the Troubles were like having an elephant in your living room. That's what it was like to watch this film.

I saw this film when it first came out and remember it so clearly. The film shows the executions in such a matter-of-fact way. No background swell of music. A loud bang or two. Shocked silence broken only by footsteps walking purposefully away from the scene. I was two streets away from the Guildford bombs when they went off in 1974. I remember I finished my pint before going to see what had happened - I guess I was young, then, but there was a feeling of acceptance amid the shock. We all knew what had happened. It was on the television constantly. As my friends and I approached the Horse and Groom the shouting was just starting. And then the sirens, but those very few minutes of silence after the bangs were the loudest of my life. This film showed what it was like.

Sort of like watching a crime movie with everything but the shooting scenes edited out, or a bit like watching the world's most depressing, low key action movie.

You get an opening title that references The Troubles, and that's about it for context. Means that the violent acts - which is all there is, really - are oddly shocking at first and then maybe even tedious. It's depressing to see so much of it play out and just keep going until the movie at one point decides to end.

By being so stripped down and short, it leaves you with a lot to think about. It definitely had more of an impact on me than Clarke's similarly repetitive and low-key film Christine, too.

No context given. No story to narrate. No elaborate set pieces or character actors. Maybe about 2 lines of dialogue. What else is there? Only the brutal reality of a country's dirty little secret. Many films about touchy political issues are analysed through a character's interpretation of how they think or how a particular story plays out but Clarke plays it out simply: people are dying... never mind the other stuff, death is caused through our own inability to absorb other people's views. The end factor being death is all that really needs to be shown to get the point across. Clarke makes fantastic use of tracking shots, slipping left and right and around to follow a person into their death.

It's provocative and probably the best TV movie ever made. I can't imagine people sitting down at night, tuning into the BBC and wondering what they should think about this mini masterpiece.

I notice nobody actually from Northern Ireland seems to have commented on this... I grew up in Belfast through some of the worst of the troubles (and have been personally affected by the actions of both loyalist and republican terrorists) and I have to say that for me this film is pretty much it in a nutshell. The desensitising effect mentioned by some of the other comments is precisely what happens in real life; the fact that stuff blows up occasionally and every so often someone gets shot dead eventually starts to just become part of the scenery. I've lost count of the number of times I saw people walking through Belfast stop in their tracks for a second or two as a bomb was detonated nearby then just continue on their way. You learn to live with it, and that's the real horror, which I think is something Clarke portrays here with an extraordinary degree of empathy. Possibly some of it's because so many of the places in the film were so familiar to me but it really hit home in a way that no other film explicitly about Northern Ireland has ever done for me.