Elephant Release Date: October 24, 2003 Starring: Elias McConnell, Alex Frost, John Robinson Directed by: Gus Van Sant GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 10/24/03)
Some have complained that this very short feature, which won a controversial Palme d’or at Cannes this year, meanders; others, rather trivially, I think, have complained that director Gus Van Sant cast the high school characters with more of an eye for attractiveness than acting ability. But I guess a movie as ambitious and galvanic and discomforting as Elephant is going to elicit some ludicrous responses. The carpers are enacting the very scenario the movie’s title evokes—prattling on about everything except the elephant that’s sitting in the middle of the room.
Inspired by the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, Van Sant’s film depicts a day—or various minutes in the day—in the life of several students at a suburban high school. The “meandering” criticism is a snipe at the movie’s structure—Van Sant goes forward and backward in time, so we see the same event occur (generally a pretty mundane event, such as a couple of kids passing in the hall and discussing their plans for the rest of the day) from a number of different angles. About 20 minutes in, one character leaves the building and passes by two other high schoolers, who advise him to get as far away as possible. They are armed. At that point Van Sant skips back. We know something terrible is going to happen, we know the connective point that will signal when it will begin . . . and it makes the suspense so unbearable that you think you might actually be relieved when the shooting starts. But of course, you are not.
I haven’t been crazy about a lot of Van Sant’s recent work, but what he does here is simply astonishing. It leaves the viewer with no answers—in fact, the film ends well before its story does—but I don’t think Van Sant means to abandon us in our desolation. I think he is suggesting we use that desolation as a starting point, asking us to move from it in a direction different from that which brought us to it in the first place.
