Review of Elephant (2003) by Forrest P — 01 May 2013

Gus Van Sant shows his strength with his writing, but overall, I felt this film needed a little more in terms of its directing and acting abilities. Elephant is not necessarily a bad film, but I think that in many ways, it reaches the "bare minimum" with the subject matter it was tackling. That saying, it is still a fair representation of the events of a school-shooting.

Elephant stars mostly non-professional actors, and this shows. Granted, a majority of the actors in this film did okay, especially when one considers their noticeable lack of training. I understand the attraction for a filmmaker to look to untrained actors for a film like this. The idea is that by using untrained actors, the film gets a better sense of realism. And, in the earlier parts of the film (prior to the shooting scenes later on), the film succeeds with this. The film is mostly about the real lives of high schoolers who are unaware of the tragedy that will soon take place. And it succeeds admirably at this. Again, this is where the film gets its strength--from the brutal realism of the lives of the teenagers it depicts. There's no grand drama present, no big dilemmas that need to be overcome. The biggest things the characters in the film have to overcome are things like getting a drunk dad a ride home, getting assigned detention, whether or not to go to the mall with some friends after school, whose pictures are going to be taken. There's not even a question of who's getting invited to the prom or whether or not someone will graduate or overcome their drug addictions. The issues faced are gloriously mundane. And, again, that's where the film gets its strength. And because the actors are untrained, I think it was very easy for them to sit down and just act as though they were going through a normal day of school.

My problem with this, however, is that there are moments of the film that NEED actors with training. Specifically, these moments happen after the shootings begin. From a lot of the main characters, there was no sense of urgency with what was happening. There was little sense of immediate danger. Now, for the characters who were clueless to what was going on or who were in complete shock with what was happening, I can get behind their casual behavior. But there were too many moments of the film when a character had a gun pointed at him and he acts far too cavalier about that. I do not find that to be acceptable, and that is simply the downfall to using actors who have had no training. A good, well-trained actor can live very truthfully and realistically in made-up circumstances. An untrained actor is not going to know what that is, and that is what I found continuously throughout this picture.

Another thing that I had a problem with in this film was the small ways that Gus Van Sant tried to understand his killers. Now, a lot of critics (myself included) have always had problems with films that DON'T give their killers development or try to help the audience understand them. In fact, I have had many problems with films that lacked this understanding, even recently. However, this film is different. Gus Van Sant VERY wisely asks a lot of questions about his killers. He sets them up as very real people and our understanding around them is very meticulously limited. However, my problem actually comes with when Gus Van Sant DOES give us answers to the many questions we have. For instance, there is a scene in which we watch the killers watch a documentary on Adolf Hitler. I don't really like what this says about the killers. Teenagers who bring guns to school are not of the same breed as killers like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates or Freddy Krueger. There are completely different things going on inside them. And what's even more frustrating is that since a majority of these teenagers end up committing suicide by the time their shooting sprees are over, there are not many opportunities for people to ask questions about them. A lot of what we know about their whys and wherefores and hows and whens and whats are left in the dark. And the more this film left the audience as much in the dark about that as it does its other characters, the stronger the message it sent.

Because what this film is about, at the end of the day, is a school shooting. And how abruptly it happens and how we, as a society, don't suspect it. There's nothing out of the ordinary about the day leading up to the shooting, just as there is nothing out of the ordinary about the days leading up to any tragedy. We go through life, we get to know people-perhaps very well, perhaps not-and then, all at once, something falls on us that rips our world apart. And there's no expecting it, there's no preventing it, there's no stopping it, and there's no message for it. There is little understanding about it. It's confusing and shocking. At this movie's core, it understands that, and that's what makes it work.

Gus Van Sant's film is visceral and brutally realistic. This is where it gets its strength. It is probably not for the faint of heart, but if you know what the film's about and you know you would not handle that material well and STILL decide to see it, I see that as your own fault. I enjoyed the film, in spite of the numerous problems I had with it.

6/10.