Hey folks, Harry here... doesn't seem that Van Sant's ELEPHANT is making quite the stir that it made at Cannes... but maybe that's cuz Cannes was quite lackluster this year, and Toronto seems to be schooling the world on how to kick ass properly. Hmmm... Here's BUTTERCUP with the nightmare from Van Sant entitled ELEPHANT...
Hey Harry,
Buttercup again. Not sure how coherent this'll be since I just got back from a party, but here goes. I was really excited to see Elephant - I didn't have expectations of what the film would be, but I did expect it to be good. I wasn't disappointed. Both my friend and I agreed that overall this was a good, solid movie. It raises a lot of questions and provokes a lot of post-film discussion.
Elephant is a film from Gus Van Sant about a Columbine-like event. The film follows around several different students at a high school while they go about their day, and there's a tension throughout the film which is created by the fact that we know what happens at the end, we just don't know how it'll play out. There was a lot of improvisation in the film; the actors used are all real-life students, so there isn't any sense of "what the hell, that guy must be 30, what's he doing playing a teenager." The film is made up of a series of scenes which introduce us to various students at the high school, and the characters in the film are surprisingly compelling, considering the fact that we don't really get to see too much of them (the film clocks in at 81 minutes). Part of the reason why it's so easy to identify with these characters is the fact that we've all been there before, we can recognize parts of ourselves and the people we knew in high school in the characters. The actors also do a great job at being believable. I also found the choice of music to be interesting - Moonlight Sonata is one of the most easily recognizable and familiar classical songs and it pops up twice in the film, adding to the familiarity of the film's first act. The first part of the film by itself is quite comfortable to watch in some ways because it all feels so familiar, but you never forget what's coming up at the end. You begin to become attached to the characters, and you keep wondering what'll happen to them in the end, who will survive.
There were some parts of the film that felt out of place, though (spoilers ahead). There's a scene towards the end where the two boys who perpetrate the massacre (Eric and Alex) get in the shower together, and my friend and I both felt that it disrupted the flow of the film. We also found it odd that when John, the first student we're introduced to, runs into Eric and Alex and is told to stay out of the building, he realizes that something bad is going to happen and starts warning people, but doesn't think to contact the police or 911. Also, Benny's late introduction feels out of place - he only appears briefly after the shootings start to help one girl out of the building, then walks up behind one of the shooters, but then gets shot himself. The part near the end where either Eric shoots Alex or vice versa also marred the film's flow. But overall, we both thought that the film was well done. (end spoilers)
Elephant can be quite uncomfortable to watch because it does seem very close to what happened in Columbine, but doesn't offer any sort of explainations or answers. After Columbine, I think that people were trying to figure out how to react and how to deal with it, but this movie brings it much closer. You basically live through that day and at the end, it becomes a question of 'how to *you* deal with it.' I suppose that in that way, Elephant is quite a personal experience because it demands that its audience take some sort of action after watching it, to think about what's happened. There is no closure at the end of the movie, and you're left with more questions than answers. But hey, maybe that's a good thing.
Bye for now!
Buttercup
