Film Review:

Elephant (Gus van Sant)

My wife brought this home last night, and to be honest, I had completely forgotten that this had even been made. I remember thinking, when I first saw a preview, "this looks interesting"; but it slipped from my mind until I was confronted with the DVD case by the TV last night.

In an age of sensationalism and exploitation, it was refreshing to find Van Sant's subtle, thoughtful examination of a school shooting. In the hands of another director, this film would have been filled with blaring heavy metal music, trumped up "excuses" and rapid fire editing. We're not given much back story on any of the characters, but there's a remarkable sense of intimacy created nonetheless: snips of conversations and long tracking shots make us feel part of this world. Of course this is not a real intimacy and maybe that's the point, maybe that's highschool: a bunch of people with no real shared interests stuck together through circumstance. Though we feel for these kids, we only know as much about any of them as anyone in highschool knows about anyone else; we see what other students would see. We watch the kids who are picked on; we hear the rumours of teen pregancy; we see evidence of neglectful parents. Truly, almost any one of these kids could be the ones to snap...

Through a clever handling of time Van Sant brings us to the moment of crisis early in the film, but he respects us enough to flashback without the obvious "earlier that week" title. He expects his audience to follow the story, to participate in the story. There are no easy answers in Elephant.