Review of Elephant (2003) by Lady D — 13 Aug 2009

As Indie as American cinema gets, Gus Van Sant goes off on one of his typical obscure, minimalist experiments, and the results are mixed. It looks great, some good performances from first-time actors, but it doesn't set out to give any story, backstory, reasons, answers... which could be a good thing given the subject matter of a high-school massacare, but you don't get to know any characters, so its hard to connect with the film.

I don't know, maybe that's the point of the whole thing i.e. should the viewer care about the victims of columbine etc. or are they just faces on a tv news report. So it throws up some interesting, challenging points, but as a film, its hard-going.

Lots of loooooong steadi-cam shots of people walking around as the feeling of dread rises (i.e. you know what's coming, so you spend the first hour waiting for it to happen), and then it all goes down. The violence is handled in a realistic, blunt manner (as it should), highlighting the pointlessness of the students and teachers deaths. On the whole, the film concerns itself with the normal, every day to-ing and fro-ing of students at high school; everyone unsuspecting of how the day would end. But does that make a good film?

Overall, it left me confused (again, maybe that's what Van Sant was going for), and I felt like an interview with the director was necessary to understand what he was trying to achieve. A film with messages for discussion; to be dissected in a film studies class - the experience of viewing it doesn't match up to the depth of questions left hanging in the air post-viewing.