I know many have already written about Elephant since it came out over 5 1/2 years ago, but here's just just a couple more cents on it...
Elephant is a film that, if nothing else, doesn't lie to the audience with false artifice. Gus Van Sant's direction emphasizes a growing identification with all the characters because of how long he stays with them with the camera, how it doesn't judge or create situations that bring the viewer into feeling like "it's just a movie". Rather, it's like a documentary but without the hand-held effect. It's actually something of a moral obligation that Van Sant creates with his subjects to follow them and not make what one might see in some stupid teen comedy or even something melodramatic.
The technique: going into it I thought, 'this will be an intellectual exercise, in getting us to think about the banality of high school life and the absolute horror that comes in with crazy people who come and shoot up everyone in the school'. There is some thought one must put into it, whether you respond positively or negatively to the film, but it's an emotional experience too because of how stripped down the narrative is. And because of this morality that the tracking ends up doing with the subjects (Jean-Luc Godard once pointed out this idea of morality with a tracking shot), Van Sant's modus operandi is staggering. Minutes and minutes end up going by, with his stedi-cam following with brutal accuracy these figures in the hallways and in the classrooms, and the simplicity connects us to them.
This may not be for some. It's completely understandable, since I even thought once or twice "why is this shot going on THIS long, really?" The answer will be different for everyone, and what they bring to the picture. Van Sant has done this before, such as with Milk or to a more horrible extent Psycho, but here it's ever so lucid and at the same time veering on being something out of a carefully constructed nightmare. At the least, it's a triumph of blocking, which is just getting all of the actors or people in place and playing the scenes out, and everything flows so well together- and even this through the occasional moment of slow motion or put to a somber piano piece- that we come dangerously close to forgetting we're in the grasp of the subjective viewpoint. It's staggering work in that uncompromising way movies can be sometimes.
As for the cast themselves? They add to the tragically naturalistic feel of the picture, and most of them are very good at being themselves, or what we might not have to imagine them as being different. Only a couple of key players like the actual killers have to be "performed" with some dialog that was likely written, but the rest, improvised or maybe just worked out during the scene as it was filmed, does as much as the camera to keep us glued in to the situations. And even more startling, a feeling that grows deeper as the film goes on in the ingenious interweaving of character threads, is the emphasis we get on the significant details of everyone: the nerdy girl wont put on gym shorts, the photographer takes whatever pictures he can get and develops them carefully, John's father is drunk but only shows his sadness once, and the three teenage girls talk and talk and are collectively bulimic.
And then, of course, Alex, who is so terrifying because of a similar simplicity that he shares with the others, except for him being the so-called "elephant in the room" in the picture. Or maybe it's something else of the elephant, of something that strikes through the permanence that makes high school life so dull and ordinary, that can't really be explained. Elephant sticks with you once it ends, and not because of some hysterical ending of a shoot-out. It's meditative and cool and assertive of how horrific something like Columbine, or any school shooting, can be when tossing aside the abstract tragedy that the media created or still creates. That there's no definitive explanation. It just is. It's one of the most powerful experiences to have with modern independent cinema.
Elephant is a film that, if nothing else, doesn't lie to the audience with false artifice. Gus Van Sant's direction emphasizes a growing identification with all the characters because of how long he stays with them with the camera, how it doesn't judge or create situations that bring the viewer into feeling like "it's just a movie". Rather, it's like a documentary but without the hand-held effect. It's actually something of a moral obligation that Van Sant creates with his subjects to follow them and not make what one might see in some stupid teen comedy or even something melodramatic.
The technique: going into it I thought, 'this will be an intellectual exercise, in getting us to think about the banality of high school life and the absolute horror that comes in with crazy people who come and shoot up everyone in the school'. There is some thought one must put into it, whether you respond positively or negatively to the film, but it's an emotional experience too because of how stripped down the narrative is. And because of this morality that the tracking ends up doing with the subjects (Jean-Luc Godard once pointed out this idea of morality with a tracking shot), Van Sant's modus operandi is staggering. Minutes and minutes end up going by, with his stedi-cam following with brutal accuracy these figures in the hallways and in the classrooms, and the simplicity connects us to them.
This may not be for some. It's completely understandable, since I even thought once or twice "why is this shot going on THIS long, really?" The answer will be different for everyone, and what they bring to the picture. Van Sant has done this before, such as with Milk or to a more horrible extent Psycho, but here it's ever so lucid and at the same time veering on being something out of a carefully constructed nightmare. At the least, it's a triumph of blocking, which is just getting all of the actors or people in place and playing the scenes out, and everything flows so well together- and even this through the occasional moment of slow motion or put to a somber piano piece- that we come dangerously close to forgetting we're in the grasp of the subjective viewpoint. It's staggering work in that uncompromising way movies can be sometimes.
As for the cast themselves? They add to the tragically naturalistic feel of the picture, and most of them are very good at being themselves, or what we might not have to imagine them as being different. Only a couple of key players like the actual killers have to be "performed" with some dialog that was likely written, but the rest, improvised or maybe just worked out during the scene as it was filmed, does as much as the camera to keep us glued in to the situations. And even more startling, a feeling that grows deeper as the film goes on in the ingenious interweaving of character threads, is the emphasis we get on the significant details of everyone: the nerdy girl wont put on gym shorts, the photographer takes whatever pictures he can get and develops them carefully, John's father is drunk but only shows his sadness once, and the three teenage girls talk and talk and are collectively bulimic.
And then, of course, Alex, who is so terrifying because of a similar simplicity that he shares with the others, except for him being the so-called "elephant in the room" in the picture. Or maybe it's something else of the elephant, of something that strikes through the permanence that makes high school life so dull and ordinary, that can't really be explained. Elephant sticks with you once it ends, and not because of some hysterical ending of a shoot-out. It's meditative and cool and assertive of how horrific something like Columbine, or any school shooting, can be when tossing aside the abstract tragedy that the media created or still creates. That there's no definitive explanation. It just is. It's one of the most powerful experiences to have with modern independent cinema.