Photo: Courtesy of Fine Line Features/HBO
Elephant is a film by Gus Van Sant, who’s previous work I’m not all too familiar with, but still find to be rather interesting. In the past year I’ve watched My Own Private Idaho, which I thought was a really beautiful film, albeit rather melancholic. It also featured a great scene in which River Phoenix's character spills his heart out to Keanu Reeves, which I’ll be honest I teared up at.
Film: Courtesy of Fine Line Features
I’m also familiar with Good Will Hunting, although I’ve never seen it, I just know it more for the Elliot Smith songs that were featured on the soundtrack.
That being said, Elephant is a very strong shift in tone from what I’ve seen from him so far. The film follows high schoolers of different backgrounds and interests as they all eventually get picked apart at the hands of two shooters, very similar to that of the Columbine massacre.
The film utilizes real high schoolers, it takes place at an actual high school, and a lot of the conversations are largely improvised by the students. It switches between different perspectives throughout, forcing you to become familiar with these students, attaching yourself to them, relating to them.
Photo: Courtesy of Fine Line Features/HBO
We have long one-take scenes that slowly pan around a bedroom or a hallway as if we’re actually there with these kids sort of spectating them as they go about their days. We see them take pictures, gossip about nothing and everything, talk about nothing and everything, it feels genuine which makes the lead up to the inevitable all the more shocking.
The film also takes a good moment to study just how one reaches this tipping point and how things like bullying, parental neglect, repressed sexuality, far right propaganda, or ultra violent video games might play a factor into why these kids did the thing they did. It also shows how easy it was for these teenagers to go about killing their classmates, ordering their guns online, and practicing the use of their weapons in their parents' garage. And while it largely gives itself away twenty minutes in, it captures in gruesome detail how these things happen and just how easy it is to do.
It’s an incredibly disturbing film and it brought back some old fears that I seemed to have forgotten. And you wanna know the worst part? It came out in 2003, to put that in perspective, I wasn’t even alive yet. Over twenty years later and this is still an issue (although it wasn't commonplace then like it is now).
When I was in high school, the thought that one day I could get shot just walking the hallway, crossed my mind a lot. We had to do active shooter drills which felt very dumb to me because there’s a very good chance that if there was a shooter at our school, it would be one of our peers. I remember cutting off friends for making jokes about this very thing, I knew people who were possibilities. It’s jarring to me how even twenty years ago, the way people turn into these murderers hasn’t changed, the way they get their hands on these weapons hasn’t changed, and the way we talk about it hasn’t changed.
It reminded me of a genuine fear that I held with me for over a decade. This film captures in sharp detail every student’s worst nightmare and I really wish it didn’t exist.
What was really infuriating to me about the film was researching it for this review. When looking up other reviews I found edits of the movie that showed just how “cool” something like this really is with millions of views. It’s like those distasteful music videos for songs like Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer which uses clips from the film My Friend Dahmer, or Foster the People’s Pumped Up Kicks which uses clips from that stupid film Run Hide Fight.
Seeing others interpretations of what it’s supposed to be and how much praise is lauded at it makes me want to tear my face off.
The intentions of this picture seem to be very centered, trying to rationalize why, but it winds up sensationalizing awful tragedy. Why show in such explicit detail these events as their happening? Why try to empathize if we know they’re about to get blown away by the end of the film? Why is there classical music soundtracked over this wretched experience? It’s disgusting and it’s probably gonna be the cause of more harm than good, and now twenty years later, we know that.
Everybody knows that the two shooters in the film are supposed to be almost exact carbon copies of the Columbine shooters, and by presenting these things in such a clearly calculated manner with open spacing and atmosphere, anyone can interpret the film as anything.
The sick people who fantasize about these things will view the two losers as icons and it might justify them into doing something really stupid. It makes the original shooters into celebrities, turning them into misunderstood arthouse darlings paired with a Palm D'or. It's the definition of media contagion.
I get writing about tragedies, but when being this abstract and open ended, you end up romanticizing it rather than showing the true horrors behind it.
This film captures in sharp detail every student’s worst nightmare and by doing so might materialize it for some.
4. I give this film a 4/10.
