Starring: Alex Frost, Eric Deulan, Elias McConnell, Kristen Hicks and Timothy Bottoms
Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Elephant is not the movie that I expected it to be. Just several days before I had attended the Bowling for Columbine film forum on campus, and the horror depicted on the blurry surveilance tapes from Columbine High had continued to linger in my mind. I went into Elephant expecting to be shocked and horrified by the subject matter, but more importantly find answers that would help explain how such a tragedy could possibly happen. None of these things happened.
Technically, Elephant is not a cinematic retelling of the Columbine tragedy; rather, it uses the real-life events as a springboard to tell a similar story. The fictional high school is located in Oregon, and while the two killers are obviously modeled after the individuals who perpetrated the actual events at Columbine, the rest of the characters are invented to represent typical high school students (all are non-actors who were hired to simply "play themselves.")
The cocky athletic stars, the appearance-obsessed girls who whine about the calories in salad dressing, the social outcasts and the misunderstood rule-breakers all appeare in Elephant. Memories of rushing to class before the bell rings and running drills in P.E. all came flooding back to me with a startling clarity as I watched the film unfold. Director Gus Van Sant strives to create a school setting that is uncomfortably familiar, and for the most part he succeeds.
Time and perspective are two themes explored through the course of the film. Deliberately set at an excruciatingly slow pace, the film emphasizes the mundane and empty quality of the characters' lives.
The audience experiences a single isolated moment several times, each time shown from the perspective of a different student involved in the incident. By employing this technique, Van San effectively shows how much happens during any single point in time.
Aside from a fleeting glance towards the beginning, the killers aren't even introduced until half-way thought the film. And when we do finally meet them, it's striking how normal they are. One practices Beethoven classics on the piano. The other plays a video game similar to ones I've seen played in countless dorm rooms on this campus. No easy answers are given in regards to motivation.
All emotion is drained from the film, even as the massacre takes place. Van Sant doesn't want us to use our emotions to react to the film; instead he forces us to use our heads to try to make some kind of sense of the tragedy.
Elephant is without a doubt one of the most polarizing films of the year. Some have proclaimed it a masterpiece; others will find room for it on their "worst of the year' lists. My reaction? Elephant is an important film depicting a relevant subject that deserves to be seen.
-November 13, 2003
