Review of Elephant (2015) by Nick F — 21 Jan 2009

An absolute waste of potential. The Columbine saga whilst incredibly tragic, is an interesting subject to pursue and should make for an interesting film and one that tugs at the heart strings. On this occasion however, Elephant has managed to turn an intriguing event in America's history into a dissapointingly boring, mundane bag of codswallop.

Even at a mere 81 minutes it felt longer than Gone With The Wind! The build up to the shooting is ok at best and at least it gets the American high school style cliques spot on, i.e the jocks, the bitchy girls and so on.

But the shootings themselves just lack any dramatic impact whatsoever. One particular scene completely baffles my mind. I'm sure there's an artistic reason for it somewhere, but bear with me. The character in question is introduced to us, and proceeds to walk around for a few minutes doing precisely nothing, only for him to then be killed off! Firstly, why not use that screen time to focus on the other characters a bit more who actually have some useage to the film.

Secondly, if you're a paying customer buying this film or seeing it in the cinema, how do you feel knowing you just spent a portion of your money watching somebody doing fuck all before meeting his demise? I see why the film gets critical acclaim, and the narrative style is a nice change from the norm.

But the overwhelming dullness of this production is inexcusable and is the main reason I believe it suffers. Call my cynical, but this just didn't do it for me at all.