Elephant
September 7th 2008 05:26
ELEPHANT
by
Gus Van Sant
Elephant by Gus Van Sant
It may be a shock to anyone who has only been exposed Van Sant’s commercial films, some having their merits (My Own Private Idaho) and some being down right unbearable (To Die For). There is however another side to his personality – the poet - and Elephant is a film as close to poetry as I have ever seen. It is also a horror film as close to any, not the kind of horror that attack’s you on a visceral level, but the kind which attacks your comfort and sense of awareness on a purely emotional level.
If Gerry, Elephant, Drugstore Cowboy etc had been the only things we had seen from Van Sant, we might consider him an American Tarkovsky. Instead, many consider him a sell out with such devastating compromises as ‘Finding Forrester’ and ‘Good Will Hunting’. In Elephant he reminds us again of his might.
Van Sant recieving the Palm D'Or for Elephant
A school day begins, a normal day, a student arrives late and gets into trouble after driving his drunk dad around. A boyfriend and girlfriend discuss a party. There is a group meeting on gay awareness. A girl gets another warning for her refusal to wear her sports shorts. Someone gets teased. They all go to class – you’re typical high school day . The camera watches the days events with a hypnotic intensity. – kids go to the library, a clique of popular girls eat lunch at the cafeteria then go to the bathroom and vomit it up. Two boys sit at home admiring new gun models and playing video games, they then go have a shower together and plan to shoot up their school.
One of the most chilling experiences ever to be put to film
The last half hour of this film left me frozen in terror, I remember not being able to move during this particular sequence of long takes and tracking shots. The films style and repetitive, multiple point of view editing gives it a dream like quality, that is what makes the violence so hard to stomach as this school day becomes so downright terrifying. There is a cruel sense of anticipation in this film. We have no idea what will happen.
If the Columbine and kindergarten shootings had not happened this would play like some demented dream. What is the film maker saying - you could sum up his message with – “You’re guess is as good as mine”. You could think that playing the piano has as much to do with the violence as do playing video games.
Van Sant directs his cast of real high school students
As Van Sant leaves his audience as confused and upset as he was, one huge revelation dawned upon me after watching Elephant. I do not live in America and when these real events were reported, as the news goes, it left me with the usual thoughts of, ‘How can this happen’, ‘the world is so screwed up,’ ‘ I’m so glad I don’t live in America’. There were thoughts of tragedy and unfairness occurring, and perhaps like everyone else, a day or two later I had forgotten about it. It was yesterdays news. Today I had to be upset about the earthquake some where in Asia or the bomb blast in Israel or some new event that the media was reporting. This was my impression as an Australian being so far from the U.S. and so out of touch with this reality. Elephant will not be yesterdays news, but to this decades number of cinematic achievements that will never make me forget the horror of this sort of event. Elephant is a movie that made me feel a hell of a lot more than the news did and will not be so easy for me to forget.
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