Written, directed and edited by Gus Van Sant
Presented by HBO Films and Fine Line Features
Rated R; 81 minutes
Here are some adjectives to describe Elephant that I'm
sure they'll want to use in all the ads:
"Boring!"
"Banal!"
"Horrifying!"
"Memorable!"
Well, maybe those last two
Elephant is Gus Van Sant's attempt to explain - or
rather, not to explain - a Columbine-style school shooting.
It would make an interesting double bill with Michael Moore's
Bowling for Columbine. The latter is an actual documentary
tricked out with every provocative idea and attention-grabbing
gimmick Moore could think up. Elephant, ostensibly
a fiction film, is quiet, rhythmic and almost maddeningly
undramatic - until the violence erupts in the film's final
minutes.
For all their differences, neither film really makes much
headway in explaining why a few kids become mass murderers,
while most simply suffer through the hell that high school
can be. Moore's film tries out several explanations, but it's
more effective in mocking those who try to simplistically
blame such events on, say, the killers' penchant for listening
to Marilyn Manson music.
Van Sant's movie, filmed in and around a sprawling suburban
high school in his native Portland, OR, follows several students
as they go about their day. It literally follows: I didn't
time it, but I'm guesstimating that at least one-third of Elephant 's 81-minute running time is taken up with long,
long tracking shots of people walking away from the camera.
If you have a fetishistic interest in looking at the back
of teenagers' heads, this is the film for you.
As dull as this is - and the camerawork's monotony matches
most of the dialogue, which ranges from painfully banal to
painfully real (and for that reason, occasionally both funny
and poignant) - it's also all of a piece. We - the viewers?
society? adults? - are always following behind, rarely privy
to what's really going on in any of these kids' heads. Again
and again, Van Sant makes us aware of what we're not seeing;
not just faces but the photos shot by Elias (Elias McConnell),
for example. Even when Van Sant does focus in on a character's
face, he'll hold the camera in so close, and for so long,
that the effect is less revealing than frustrating. We can
look as long as we want and we'll never be closer to the truth.
Not that he doesn't tease us with some "explanations"
for why Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) turn the
school into a theater of blood. Alex is a picked-on scapegoat
at school, alternately ignored or pelted with spitballs during
class. He and Eric watch a History Channel-style documentary
about Hitler's rise to power; the air freshener hanging from
their car's rear view mirror is a grinning red devil; Eric
plays violent video games while Alex practices Beethoven on
the piano. And just to make sure the entire political spectrum
is offended, before suiting up to roam the halls with the
guns they ordered via the Internet, the two killers share
a shower, and a lingering kiss.
But to me, these "explanations" don't really explain
anything, except that it's far too easy to get guns (can they
really be ordered online and delivered to your home? That
seems hard to believe, even in George W. Bush's America.)
The film's title refers not only to the elephant in the room
(violence and guns) but to the old parable of the blind men
describing an elephant: the one feeling its trunk says the
elephant is a snake, the one feeling its leg says the elephant
is a tree, the one feeling its side says it's a wall, etc.
What you think causes violence depends on where you stand,
and who you are. And when violence erupts, it's a matter of
chance whether you live or die.
To its credit, Elephant, unlike thousands of other
films and TV shows, doesn't let us distance ourselves from
the violence it depicts. It even made me a bit of a co-conspirator.
The film's very flatness made me anxious - and yes, a little
hungry for something to happen - even if that something was
people getting their heads blown off. I think Van Sant is
playing with our desire for narrative: Why are they doing
this? How will they do it? Who will live? Who will die? What
will it all mean? We don't really get any answers. No wonder
this won the Palme D'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival-it's
nihilism, existentialism and the shallowness and violence
of American culture all rolled up into one. And as difficult
as it is to watch, it's an important film.
Click here to read
an interview with Elephant's director
and executive producer.
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