Elephant

This movie is a fictional story, but it is essentially a retelling of the Columbine High massacre. It only spans maybe an hour in time, but it coves the points of view of a lot of people, from victims to bystanders to the murderers themselves.

It's a particularly important piece because of its storytelling style. Van Sant has the camera follow one character at a time, on the day of the murders, and lets the story tell itself. It is about as neutral as one can get, really. Van Sant doesn't use foreshadowing, he doesn't frame any character up as a particular archetype, he doesn't play ominous music, and the dialogue is about as inane and high school-ish as you can get, very realistic actually. There are no jokes, and relatively few scenes designed for maximum shock effect. That's the whole point: the situation was a normal high school day, and the very events, regardless of how you paint them, should be as shocking as anything. All the while you're asking yourself, "How can this possibly lead to a massacre? These are all normal kids," which faithfully recreates the tone of morning leading up the unexpected real life events.

If you're looking for a conventional movie with a clear beginning, middle, end, good and bad guys, glorified heroism and demonized violence, you won't like this movie, it's not a made for TV special, it's closer to an art film.

Some people have expressed anger at the movie, accusing it of some sort of liberal Michael Moore anti-2nd amendment sympathies or heavy handed preaching. Having seen it I can't possibly understand what they're talking about. My suspicion is that they're seeing what they want to see. And that leads me to wonder just what a good movie about Columbine would look like, in their opinions. To me, this is it.

Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" is what critics claimed it to be - an observation. The film strains very hard from any bias and undue sentimentality. It seeks to create a distanced atmosphere of void allowing the viewer to fill it with his / her emotional or intellectual reaction.

Does it work? In maintaining his distance Van Sant succeeds admirably, faltering only once or twice, satisfying some distasteful or satirically exaggerated high-school cliche. For instance, the camera follows three clearly popular girls, all concerned with their diet, through the lunch line in the cafeteria to the table where they have an empty and inconclusive discussion about the meaning of friendship (this is not the problem) and wander into the bathroom and synchronize vomiting behind closed stalls (this is). While there are, doubtless, instances of such behavior in all high-schools, the scene seems like a forced joke, irony shoved down the throat of the audience. Still, these shortcomings are few and far between. Most of the film consists of unfinished, meandering conversations and meandering people, wandering in and out of focus of the observing camera, which traces its way through a Portland school on one fall day. It does so, portraying the school life with solid realism, focusing on a few characters who experience this life differently.

However, these variegated experiences fade into meaninglessness when Columbine-style violence breaks out and the characters, known and anonymous, are shot by two boys. Van Sant's implication, objective camera observation or not, is clear in the way he tells his story. Whatever these kids that we meet experience is rendered meaningless by the violence, equally meaningless, that comes to end them. We are left with tragedy, questions, and shock. "Elephant" achieves this emotional resonance quite well precisely through its merciless observation, its refusal to preach and to sentimentalize the events it portrays.

Nonetheless, I think that "Elephant" should not necessarily be judged by its lack of sentimentality and bias. In an somewhat exaggerated comparison, "Elephant" feels a little like Van Sant's remake of "Psycho," shot for shot. Here is a film which is an attempt at a recreation of something like that which happened at Columbine in the course of one day, without the media and social baggage that came afterward. (Michael Moore dug into that). Its goal is exacting realism, its method strict self-discipline and austere self-restraint. And Van Sant leaves us with a haunting picture of school violence. So what? Yes, he manages to shed a lot of the embellishments with which society and the media have adorned school violence, but it leaves us with very little. The meaninglessness of the violence is self-explanatory as is the ordinariness of the day on which the violence occurred, until it occurred.

Van Sant does not blame the media, videogames, or rock-music (though videogames feature in the film more prominently than media, while there is a total absence of rock-music). He just shows us what happened. I think the problem is not that people didn't know what happened, but utilized events like Columbine to attack things they hated about society, to push censorship, or to oppose gun laws, to push for education, or oppose lax security at schools. Columbine created a forum for many bubbling issues and offered a chance at scapegoating. It warned of the growing alienation of high-school kids (which the film depicts reasonably well), while signaling of a much-deeper crisis emerging within our society. While I think that Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine" is a film hardly without biases and agenda (something that is to be treasured in "Elephant), it attacks that second, more prominent problem much more successfully. Columbine exposed many contradictions within schools, homes and in the the much larger social and political arenas.

"Elephant" is a film that expertly portrays alienation of its subjects and the meaninglessness to which they are reduced by the violence that breaks out. And, while I do not oppose but praise its restraint, "Elephant" says far too little to be watched again and again, or remembered for a long time.

Imagine it: A horrific tragedy has taken place in a local school, the violence and inexplicability of which has stunned everyone who has heard of it. A meeting is announced that will address the issues that such an event has raised. At the meeting, the main speaker takes the floor, stares at his audience for a few long seconds, then shrugs his shoulders and mumbles "S**t happens". What? You ask. That's it? "Well," he says, "you can't expect me to provide YOU with the answers. But I did take some nice photos".

That's "Elephant".

It would be hard to tackle such a topic without sinking into "Movie of the Week" territory, so Van Sant avoids this by sitting down and not doing much of anything. But artfully.

Why was this film made? What does it tell us about the events? That they happened. What does he tell us about the victims? Nothing, absolutely nothing. We follow them around, interminably (I feel I knew the backs of their heads intimately, if nothing else) and it's a lot like reality tv -- dull: uninvolving, unrevealing and uneventful. What does it tell us about the perpetrators? Nothing we don't already know, haven't already read. Insights? None. It exists in its own universe, blank and unfeeling, a perfect circle, Art for Art's sake.

As far as it goes, there are some beautiful touches, here -- the overlapping time frames, the slowing down of the action to signify a small, private, joyful moment -- but Van Sant bottles out on taking them anywhere, afraid as he seems to be of taking a stand, making a statement or engaging, emotionally, in any way with anything here.

All in all, an Artsy and pointless exercise in navel-gazing, one that masquerades as something much deeper, and hopes its own silence and blankness will be taken for wisdom.

On April 20, 1999, two boys wearing trench coats carried a daunting arsenal of weapons harnessed with military web gear into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and systematically gunned down thirteen students. Gruesome though it was, the incident was just one of eight fatal high school shootings between 1997 and 1999. These traumatizing events began a debate about what was wrong with the nation's youth, an issue that is the subject of Gus Van Sant's Elephant.

Winner of the Golden Palm at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Elephant is a brilliant and deeply affecting film that makes a courageous attempt to grasp the malaise of today's youth culture. Van Sant does not attempt to explain Columbine or uncover its underlying causes, and there is no revealing epiphany. His film is a highly stylized, dreamlike tone poem that defies linear conventions and is almost surreal in its approach. Using flashbacks and recurring images from different points of view, the film captures the mood and tone of its adolescent world: its perceptions, its self-absorption, and ultimately its darkest instincts.

The camera is a detached observer, and the strength of the film lies in its acute power of observation and detail. Van Sant shows us all the surface rituals: the girl cheerleaders, the boys playing football, the locker-lined hallways, the academic discussions, yet an ineffable feeling of loneliness pervades. The picture features impeccable acting by a group of non-professionals from the Portland, Oregon area. Each character is introduced separately and we see them going about their business on a seemingly ordinary school day. The steadicam-tracking camera follows them as they walk through the sterile halls that seem endless. The school appears without life -- a place where one feels a desperate sense of loss.

We see John (John Robinson), a blonde-haired surfer type, take over the driving from his father who has had too much to drink, then get called to task by an administrator for being late for school. Eli (Elias McConnell) is a photographer who asks classmates, including John, to pose for pictures. Football player Jordan (Jordan Taylor) meets his girlfriend Carrie (Carrie Finklea) for lunch. Three friends Nicole (Nicole George), Brittany (Brittany Mountain), and Acadia (Alicia Miles) gossip and argue about who is whose best friend. Michelle (Kristen Hicks) refuses to wear shorts, is admonished by her teacher, and then goes to work in the library. The paths of these students crisscross throughout the film and each has their own destiny to fulfill when the violence erupts.

The main protagonists, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen) are modeled after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine. When we first meet Alex, he is being shunned by his fellow students, called names and pelted with spitballs in science class. Alex is more outgoing and creative, Eric more passive, but their personalities complement each other. Alex and Eric wait at home until a strange package arrives in the mail while Alex plays Beethoven's "Fur Elise" on the piano. When they return to school, they are dressed in combat gear and ready to kill.

Rather than giving us pat answers, Van Sant bases his approach on the elusiveness of truth, and our insatiable desire to know more. The imagery and camerawork are almost painfully beautiful, while the disconnected narrative deliberately withholds closure. On top of all this, the pacing is superb, slowly building up the almost unbearable tension. When it is finally released, the explosion hits you with a frightening energy that is as unforgettable as it is chilling.

A refreshing film that was so simple that all of the complicatedness of the motives was so simply explained, and it worked. Not to mention the cinematography and lengthy shots were amazing. Also, from a 52 year old man, I expected worse of high school student dialogue, but boy was I surprised. Being in high school myself, I completely was convinced of this being actual high school dialogue, perhaps because much of it was improvised. I just cannot describe my feelings after watching the movie, like when most finish great films. It was realistic and simple, yet went to levels of insanity.

p.s.--the sound design was absolutely fantastic