Review of Elephant (2010) by Zane U — 22 Oct 2009

It's super unsettling, but I would refrain from labeling it as "realistic." I feel like the characters are real, but that they are, in a way, hyper-realized. They fall almost into cliches and stereotypes because the dialogue is so limited that we have to find out what kind of person they are in only a few lines. For example the group of three girls have no depth when they hold generic conversations about how terrible their mom's are and how much fat is in their salad dressing. People may say these things, but I can't imagine anybody so easily fitting that "type" with every word that they say.

This is unfortunate because the film seems to work in every other way that it is intended. I'm unsure exactly what that intention is, however. I feel like the videogame emphasis (literally with the two kids playing a computer game and symbolically with the "first person shooter" feel of all the characters) simplifies complicated motives and, in doing so provides an easy motivation that hides others. I feel like it at once wants us to consider the randomness of tragedy, but it undermines any notion of random by pointing to a specific cause. So, despite the sinking feeling that I felt when things got heavy, I just wish things were a bit more honest on the whole.