Review of Elephant (2015) by Daniel R — 26 Sep 2011

Gus Van Sant's Elephant manages that most unique of achievements, in that it clocks in at less than ninety minutes, yet at the same time seems ponderous, self-indulgent and over-long.

The subject matter - high school shootings - deserves discussion, deserves explanation and deserves analysis. However, all of this seems to be missing here. Van Sant abandons dialogue and plot almost completely, whilst simultaneously the characters in his film fail to be fleshed out - it touches only fleetingly on each of the eight or so children who are touched by the events in the final scenes.

Maybe his point is that the children who fall victim to atrocities such as the one that plays out in this film are like the rest of us: they are a combination of the interesting, boring, charismatic and athletic, and that each of their lives is of equal value. Maybe he is saying that their stories are equally important. I don't know.

If this is the point of the picture - and I cannot be sure of this - it is a flimsy basis for one and a half hours of cinema.

One feels almost guilty in asking for more from a film like this, given its subject matter. However, it is a film, and it is asking for me to give it ninety minutes of my life. At the very least, it must try to keep me interested, both in the plot and in the characters. Unfortunately, it failed miserably in both respects.