Review of Elephant (2003) by Ahmed " — 03 Dec 2009
As pretentious as his approach is, Gus Van Sant could've had something here. A series of rotating long takes and minimalistic pacing place the viewer headfirst into the situation, but the film collapses from the actors.
The "real people portray real people in a real situation" technique is used here. This sounds interesting on paper, and could've been a hypnotic device to elevate a simplistic event. However, the actors suck.
There have been plenty of indie darlings that made great use out of real people, take Soderbergh's "Bubble" for an example. I doubt these kids had any form of coaching, as they all sounded like medicated zombies.
That would've been fine for the quiet moments, but these stoic deliveries remained once the mayhem started, and everything felt very off. An interesting experiment, but it didn't work for me.
This review of Elephant (2003) was written by Ahmed " on 03 Dec 2009.
Elephant has generally received positive reviews.
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