Review of Elephant (2015) by Hugo C — 15 Jul 2010
Some themes are so controversial that making a movie about it seems unethical. Elephant is a movie about a massacre at a school - pretty controversial, no? I think Elephant handles the theme with care and doesn't exploit it in a commercial way. It just shows how a shooting at a school could've gone.
The movie knows many layers and isn't just about the shooting: it painfully shows how most teenagers suffer. And believe: I know it's true since I'm a teenager myself. Love, drugs, partying, important decicions for the future, bullying: everything shown in this movie happens in real life. Even at the school you went, I'm sure. This makes the movie the most shocking, I guess: we all know these kind of kids...
Elephant uses a very slow, static style of movie-making which I really like and is perfect for tension-raising. What I didn't like about how it was made is that the movie felt a bit too much as an intellectual game. It stops half-way the story, some story-lines never end: it is a bit too much like real life which makes it an unsatifying movie. This is not in every case a problem but with this movie it bothered me a lot. You only get to know the characters quite superficially, which is a shame because I think the movie would've been better if they had spent more time on this.
Nevertheless: a very intense and shocking movie.
This review of Elephant (2015) was written by Hugo C on 15 Jul 2010.
Elephant has generally received positive reviews.
Was this review helpful?
