"Elephant" Ugh!

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/10/04 at 10:50am

(This was copied, my concurring response to Erik's naming it the worst film of the year. It would interesting to hear other reactions.)

Erik: Amen, amen, amen, re ELEPHANT.

I've never been so put off by such tripe. It's Van Sant's wet dream, but it says zip about Columbine, sociologically or otherwise, and as you opine, doesn't even ask questions. (Except one big one: If you shower with your best friend on the day you're going to blow away a whole school of peers, and then kiss him, do you finish the deed? In other words, if suicide is at the end of your day anyway, do you worry about being a homo?) Where is the gay activist backlash against this obscene little opus? It is shamefully shallow, and ultimately pointless.

Remember "snuff" films? This is a "'Nuff!" film.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 1/10/04 at 11:34am

And what made me angrier is to think how good this film could have been. I think following students around on a "normal" day and catching snippets of conversations here and there could have been used to great effect. Instead it was tragically wasted.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/10/04 at 2:22pm

***SPOILERS***


There was originally a script for Elephant, but it was thrown out in favour of improvisation. Non actors + improv = disaster. The reactions of everyone during the shootings was a joke. I was sitting there going "you'd be running and screaming now. Not just standing there. And who the f**k's first thought would be "oh look, killers. I'll take their picture?"" The simple explanations for the killers motivations made me angry. They were picked on a little bit and one of them heard voices. And that's it. The kiss in the shower was when I threw my hands up in the air and stopped respecting Gus Van Sant. An all round wasted opportunity that is getting amazing reviews in the lead up to its UK release. Sigh.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/10/04 at 4:09pm

Yes, yes, Eric and Popculture. I went wanting to see an artist's view of Columbine, not a movie of the week. Yet we didn't get as compelling a product as Lifetime would offer, because at least TV provides a primary color version of the basics of (melo)drama: incident, character, rising action, catharsis. I sat through the first half, trying to get my brain to go there, CONVINCED Van Sant was right -- or his artisitc vision sound -- and I was simply too shallow or impatient. And you have to be patient to endure this movie's numbing repetition, no?

As Eric asserts, Van Sant's style might have worked, we might've gotten inside this ordinary day and found the secrets (if not answers) lay in the mundane. But there needed to be real revelation in the average moments, not just cataloging people piling up. All that revisiting of run-ins from different POVs--did we learn anything?

Also, anyone who's read re: Harris and Klebolt knows those two were complicated. Van Sant didn't want to know from complexity. He seemed to think the answer is to deconstruct the event so fully -- to strip everyone of motivation, stakes, emotion -- so that the resulting blankness would provide us with a Rorschach test. But if our hearts and minds are not engaged -- via either empathy or outrage (as they are in "Friedmans") -- how do we decide what to think? (And--SPOILER: for a man unconcerned with telling details, there's a major plot hole, i.e. the guns were bought ON-LINE! No way!) What, pray tell, are we to take home from that last sequence in the refrigerated locker? It all just gives us hopelessness and a view of teenagers that suggests a huge percentage have a robotic disconnect. Isn't that POV, aside from being heartless and empty damatically, a little ... easy, Gus?

Updated On: 1/10/04 at 04:09 PM