Elephant

Plot synopsis:
Mr. McFarland driving erratically down a residential street on the way to drop off his son John. John notices damage to the car and realizes that his father is drunk, so John instructs him to move to the passenger seat and let him drive.
Alex and Eric are bullied at school by the so-called jocks, one of whom diverts a teacher and throws a spitball at Alex during science class. Later, Alex and Eric are shown at home ordering weapons from a website and receiving a rifle in the mail. While Alex is taking a shower, Eric gets in with him. He claims that he has never kissed anyone before, and the two kiss. The two formulate an attack plan. The next day, Alex and Eric prepare for the shooting, then make their way to school in silence in Alex's car.
After arriving at school, Alex and Eric encounter John outside and tell him to leave, as some "heavy shit's about to go down". Realizing what is about to happen, John attempts to warn others not to enter the school, to little effect. The two gunmen then enter the school, and after their plans to blow up parts of the school with propane bombs fail, begin shooting indiscriminately. Elias photographs them entering the library where they open fire, shooting several students, including Michelle and presumably Elias.
Realizing that the gunfire is real, students now begin to panic, while teachers attempt to quickly evacuate the building. The two boys separate, continuing their killing spree. Alex enters the bathroom where Brittany, Jordan and Nicole are, presumably shooting all three. Mr. Luce, cornered by Eric in a hallway, begs Eric to lower his weapon and talk to him, but Eric yells, "I ain't putting shit down!" and fires at him. He does speak to Mr. Luce, however; while he is doing so, he turns around suddenly to see Benny approaching him. Eric shoots and presumably kills Benny. Eric turns back to Luce and warns him not to bully kids like Alex and himself. He then agrees to let the man go, only to gun him down seconds later.
Alex enters the cafeteria, which is strewn with overturned chairs, backpacks, several dead bodies, and numerous abandoned half-eaten lunches, and sits down. Alex picks up a cup from an abandoned lunch and casually drinks from it. Eric meets up with him, and they have a brief conversation, which ends when Alex shoots Eric in mid-sentence. Alex leaves the cafeteria, showing no emotion over shooting Eric, and discovers Carrie and Nathan in a freezer. He tauntingly recites "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" to them to decide whom he should kill first. The film then cuts to credits leaving the ending ambiguous.

Tags: mystery, cruelty, murder, bleak, violence, revenge, sadist

Review:
Van Sant has the camera follow one character at a time, on the day of the murders, and lets the story tell itself.
Van Sant doesn't use foreshadowing, he doesn't frame any character up as a particular archetype, he doesn't play ominous music, and the dialogue is about as inane and high school-ish as you can get, very realistic actually.
These are all normal kids," which faithfully recreates the tone of morning leading up the unexpected real life events.If you're looking for a conventional movie with a clear beginning, middle, end, good and bad guys, glorified heroism and demonized violence, you won't like this movie, it's not a made for TV special, it's closer to an art film.Some people have expressed anger at the movie, accusing it of some sort of liberal Michael Moore anti-2nd amendment sympathies or heavy handed preaching.
Ok, so the abrupt nature of the ending may also have had something to do with that, but I felt that rare feeling of total dislocation and nausea once the film was over, so realistic and horrific was the violence.This disjointed examination of the causes of a Columbine style shooting works so much better, I think, than a 'straight' drama would have done.
Here, they are simply snatched away from us without glory, fanfare or mourning.Van Sant's method of using long shots without dialogue or cuts works brilliantly, not only lending the film a doomy atmosphere, but also a highly lyrical quality that captures perfectly the isolation and loneliness of these characters, so often unable to communicate.
I found it to be hypnotic and gripping, and in spite of knowing how things would end, I still found the ending to be devastating.The lone flaw I can identify is originality - this film owes a tremendous debt to certain international directors (Bela Tarr and an earlier Irish ELEPHANT, along with current maverick directors like Abbas Kiarostami, Hirokazu Kore'eda and Tsai Ming-liang) in both look and perspective, and it's not the only recent American film to make effective use of poetic imagery: FAR FROM HEAVEN, LOST IN TRANSLATION, CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, RAISING VICTOR VARGAS all took a similar approach to their subject matter, and were all just as effective.But VanSant's style has matured - the sky scenes in ELEPHANT seem to quote DRUGSTORE COWBOY, and in both films they symbolize the passage of time, the general drift of life, and in opening with such a scene, VanSant is offering a subtle warning that ELEPHANT is poetic and interpretive, not a docudrama or realistic take on high school shootings, and shouldn't be taken as such.
Characters drift through the day, knowing each other at mostly superficial levels (not moving beyond the level of stereotypes), which feels like what I remember high school to often be, and VanSant has no interest or need to move beyond that - to 'read into' these characters, or have them make grand speeches and gestures would've only made this film preposterous.ELEPHANT isn't about the media (which is ubiquitous), homosexuality (a random genetic occurrence found in any setting), bullies (which exist everywhere as well, though for psychological or sociological reasons) or any variety of high school caste system - it's about the randomness of violence, and the first two thirds of this film - in both the gliding long shots following characters (and the audio, with conversations drifting in and out), and the fragmented timeline (shifting back and forth in time as it moves from one character to another) - is a startling portrayal of the random, anonymous nature of an average day at school.
In much of the world, random, senseless violence is always a possibility, which is really what this film observes and (in the horror of the depiction) protests, and it's just as much of a tragedy when it occurs in a generic, random, average setting (like this school and the people in it), as when it occurs in a dramatic, unusual setting that creates martyrs and heroes.A very challenging film, in the best of ways.
It exists in its own universe, blank and unfeeling, a perfect circle, Art for Art's sake.As far as it goes, there are some beautiful touches, here -- the overlapping time frames, the slowing down of the action to signify a small, private, joyful moment -- but Van Sant bottles out on taking them anywhere, afraid as he seems to be of taking a stand, making a statement or engaging, emotionally, in any way with anything here.All in all, an Artsy and pointless exercise in navel-gazing, one that masquerades as something much deeper, and hopes its own silence and blankness will be taken for wisdom..
"To Die For" heralded Nicole Kidman's first tour de force, and "Good Will Hunting" launched the careers of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for better and for worse.Here, with "Elephant" Van Sant returns to the same pretty North Western scenery (just an in "Drugstore Cowboy" the movie was filmed on location in Portland, Oregon) and populates it with even prettier young men and women sleepwalking through an "interpretation" of the events of the Columbine Massacre.
There's an elegant listlessness to the camera-work as Van Sant lulls us into a beautifully mundane day in the life of some random high school students.
I just cannot describe my feelings after watching the movie, like when most finish great films.
Well, "Elephant" turns out to be a major disappointment!At first glance, "Elephant" is just another of Van Sant's mixed bag: some qualities (the imaginative camera-work, the throbbing subject, his refusal to play the accelerated beat that is a disease in Hollywood films) and the quota of letdowns (the stereotyped characters, the poor acting, the "mod" editing, the tentative script).
But at the end of the day, it's the kind of film that for people like me - a Third World South American citizen - is above all a chance to find out what a U.S. independent filmmaker shows and thinks about the state of his country when faced with tragic, traumatic happenings, such as the mass killing perpetrated by a white middle-class educated teenager living in an well-organized rich city (it looks rich to me) in the most powerful nation on earth.
Instead he decides to show his loving compassion for these kids and portray them as sad, naive victims of loser parents and a flawed system.Well, some alarming thoughts occur for Third-World audiences (such as myself and my friends, for instance): hey, he's not talking about poor orphaned abandoned American kids with no access to education, food, welfare, health, work, future - he's showing privileged, white, healthy, pink-faced, cereal-eating kids, with every mean at their disposal to make political decisions and establish new directions for their generation in U.S. culture, and instead they choose to spend their time in cheer-leading, gossiping, playing video-games, bulimic puking, watching TV, the internet and, in extreme but not so rare cases, playing with guns and killing each others.
"Elephant" is a visually attractive (in a hypnotic sense) but shallow, soft-hearted, ideologically flaccid film, not to be taken in the same league of courageous movies about teen violence like Hector Babenco's "Pixote", Sebastián Cordero's "Ratas Rateros Ratones", Fernando Meirelles's "City of God", Michael Moore "Bowling for Columbine", or even Larry Clark's controversial "Kids" and "The Bully".
The film shows several kids who just spend a typical day in a typical suburban American High school that ends up in a massacre.
As someone who was in high school during the Columbine shootings, I feel a connection and sensitivity to the events, and to what it was like to be a teenager at that particular time.
I haven't seen a movie in a long time where i've thought "this is an important film." This, at last, is an important subject for cinema.You know you've seen an incredible film when while you're watching it you forget all the other movies you've ever seen, and say to yourself "ah, so THIS is cinema, i never knew!" And three days later you can't think about anything else.The school in this film becomes a live universe.
We feel Van Sant could just as well have chosen to follow any of the other thousand members of the school.Twenty minutes into the film, one character heads out of the school and sees two boys with army gear on carrying big loaded bags.
Gus Van Sant has made a very strange film, in which the events of the Columbine High School massacre will be looked as a model for the movie.
Under the surface Gus Van Sant has infused the film with symbolism that is too subtle for a lot of people to grasp, and who will undoubtedly look at the big picture, one in which almost shows no action, and will get the wrong message.The film is haunting in that the camera follows the principals of the tragedy from behind.
The movie seems extremely real as though this is your local high school and these are students that attend the school.The director and writer of this film Gus Van Sant did a great job.
The movie rewinds many times to focus on its different characters.The acting was great especially since everyone in this movie is a nobody and looks like the actors and actresses all just came out of high school.
I really liked it.The film is marketed as a movie about a school shooting but I think it's more than just that.
And Gus Van Sant enters this way totally in the world of that some school in some place of America, to find there nothingness, life without meaning, without sense, life that is no life.And here is the point: the random killing at the end of the movie has no sense while the whole world there has no sense.
It gave the cheapest, easiest, cartoon-like characters and stereotypes, without any depth or dimension except what people read into it: bulemic girls, pot smoking cafeteria workers, artsy photographer dude, cutsey jock and his dopey girlfriend, etc, You could walk through any high school and gain more insight into kids these days in 5 minutes by just listening.
and we remember it again when we see Gus Van Sant "Elephant".The movie, as maybe much of you know, talk about a day in a regular school, like any other.
Van Sant based this on the facts that we know, but the movie obviously don't want to tell the story on Columbine.
But how big is the problem, like an elephant, i guess.This movie can be noted as slow, but when you really see it, a lot of things are happening on that school, on each persons...
However, on the contrary of the foregoing director that looks for guilts, reasons and motives for such an insane act, Gus Van Saint uses a hypothetical American high-school, with fictional characters, and two apparently normal teenagers to present this awesome low budget movie.
Nearly pointless (as though letting the camera roll is sufficient to throughly demonstrate the insipid tedium and autocracy permeating the high school experience), Elephant builds to its ridiculous conclusion that two cute boys, (one who sounds like a promising musician/pianist, experiment with each other (and what was the point of this?), perhaps have a couple of social issues), need to then go on a shooting spree to prove their nihilistic tendencies.
Van Sant made an incredible decision to cast high school students instead of 'real' actors because it adds, with a positive effect, to the overall feel of the film.
Van Sant attempts to paint a picture of "real" high school - I'm not so far out of high school that I've forgotten what it's like, and I can definitely say it's not like that (for example, when I was in high school, kids actually went to class) - this is an out-of-touch adult's vision of high school.The pace, editing, and dialogue are unforgivably bad, and the characters and activities are boring cliches.
ELEPHANT is not exactly about what happened' in Columbine (it doesn't pretend to portray actual events or characters) but it's about the same tragedy.The movie is not perfect, and it demands a lot of patience from the viewer, not only because it's slow, but because it doesn't pretend to explain or justify anything.
But the problems don't stop with the fact that Van Sant doesn't want to look too deeply into the possible reasons he hints at as to why things like this happen (he alludes to video games, classical music and the ability to buy guns through the post).
Much like Van Sant's remake of 'Psycho' you may well leave this film slightly offended and feeling as if you have wasted your time.
One thing i definitely dislike more than movies lacking substance are movies that claim to have it, but don't.One thing that the director Gus Van Sant seem to confuse with good film-making is the useage of long shots.
But the point with that, which clearly has escaped Gus Van Sant, is to have something INTERESTING happening in the scene.If you want to say something by shooting them from the back, you will need to have more than a couple of traditional camera positions/angles to contrast it with.
Instead Gus completely drowns us in boredom with these never ending shots that clearly loose their effect.Now for your options: If you want to see interesting depictions of troubled youth with a documentary feel to them (which "Elephant" aspires to have), watch truely artful movies such as "Gummo" by Harmony Korine, "Kids" by Larry Clark or "City of god" by Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles.
We get know emotional tie to any of the characters because Sant seems totally content in filming them from behind, as they slowly and with much boredom meander through the high school.
This very forgettable movie Elephant bores you to death with the first 70 minutes or so showing random people doing random things in a random high school, and you never care for any of them.
It also has some very unrealistic acting near the end when the actual school shooting takes place (just look at people's reactions), but I won't harp on that, since I only expect good acting from actual movies.Obviously I can see they're trying to depict how an average ordinary day at an ordinary high school with ordinary students can be affected by an extraordinary event, tragically affecting the innocent lives of everyone there.
However, if you are interested in long tracking shots that have no real point and movies that do not even attempt to explore why tragedies like this happen, by all means, watch "Elephant." I am not saying that this film was terrible, however the potential for making such a meaningful film is there and Van Sandt fails to take advantage.
Why is this?Elephant is a film that refuses to comfort its audience, and in particular is not going to offer neat cause-and-effect explanations for incidents such as the Columbine killings.Its lack of closure is essential to stop it from becoming a pat Hollywood drama we can walk away from, muttering about how terrible it is what happens to kids these days.
Oh, they are both homosexuals who play violent computer games as well but there's no effort made to explore it, there's no insight into the characters whatsoever, they barely do anything at all.I realise that nobody may know the real killers motives, so then don't make a movie about it, unless you are going to tack on some sort of discernible plot to clarify things, or at the very least to inject a bit of excitement into the proceedings, and no I don't mean lots of explosions and Arnold Schwarzenegger running through the jungle in a pair of speedo's with a rocket launcher - I mean make something happen that will enable people to hold an interest, be it interesting dialogue and character development or whatever, because I found my self losing interest in what was happening in a very big way.2/10.
But to give you a brief summary: Five minute scenes of the back of a person's head as they walk across a field in silence, three minute conversations between valley-girls on the subject of SALAD DRESSING, introducing people with the screen black and their name on it like they will be a vital character, then they get shot immediately after, if they think telling me a person's name before shooting him is going to make a difference in how I feel their wrong, what a cheap trick.
You can tell the only reason the hallway shots are so long is because they needed some way to stretch this trash into a full length feature.I have seen other reviews that compliment Van Sant on his visual genius in this movie.
This movie is exactly like Van Sant's "Last Days" only with worse acting.
It's like Van Sant watched a bunch of Kubrik movies (A TRULY brilliant director) and took away only the fly-on-the-wall type of feel, without any of the great characters, dialog, amazing shot composition and overall storytelling brilliance Kubrik films always exhibit.
I guess that adds a few minutes to the movie without costing anything.I do accept that the film is not trying to gain understanding of why, but just tries to make for a normal school day.
What was he thinking when he filmed five, and even longer, minute shots following the back of some kids head around a high school?
Van Sant is actually trying to do this in a realistic way, but ends up with a boring movie without any believable story behind it.
Van Sant has succeeded in translating the every day life of high school kids to the screen in a way that is very real and to the point.
You would have to be a complete moron not to know that this movie is about a high school shooting the minute you picked it up, but it would be good to have some kind of a plot.