Review of Elephant (2003) by Avery K — 08 Aug 2009

For all that this movie is called 'unforgettable', the only thing i'll never forget is how much I hated it. It's boring to watch and it oversimplifies and exploits one of the most interesting criminal phenomena of our time - why do kids kill? Elephant does not care or pretend to care.

The scenes of the shooters-to-be being 'tormented' by their classmates seem completely half-assed, thrown in just to fabricate a simplified motive for the killers, and the movie doesn't even try to delve into the psychology and philosophy of real shooters such as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who did not view their actions entirely as revenge like these two shooters do, but as a Darwinist social revolution that was tragic, but necessary.

Instead it acts like this psychology was never there at all. The time the film was made was no excuse as most of Harris and Klebold's writing had been released before 2003. I'm also sick of this movie being raved about simply because the two shooters were gay.

I'm queer as a three-dollar-bill and I was honestly more peeved by the shower makeout scene than anything else. The only reason this movie got 2 stars rather than 1 is that I did rather like the ending.

It was unique and provocative. Still, to me this movie will always look more like a sad attempt at cashing in on the Columbine tragedy than anything else - it's too bad, because a director like Van Sant definitely could have had the resources to make a great, intelligent film on the subject, but he chose not to do so.