Elephant (2003) Review

Gus Van Sant has made some pretty good movies so far in his career, like Milk and Good Will Hunting,  but I believe that this film about Columbine is his best. The film is not directly about Columbine, but it doesn't matter because the movie concerns many of the same events. It's a movie that is incredibly hard to watch for two reasons; it is incredibly slow movie and it depicts senseless murders that actually happened.  The entire movie feels like it's all just one long take, the longest single shot being six minutes long without a cut. The movie depicts an average day for about ten or so high school students, every event taking place during the same fifteen minutes.  This allows for the audience to connect with the characters as they roam through their lives like actual students, and when the killing begins to start the fact that these students feel like real people causes the murders to be much harder to watch.

The long steadicam shots are wonderful and make the viewer feel like an actual spectator at the school, walking through the halls following the students around. Although I love these shots, to many viewers this will make the film boring as nothing really happens during these scenes. The entire film is just showing the students' average day at school and is incredibly effective, especially when the viewer knows what tragedy will soon take place. When the shooting is about to occur I was wondering how these character's we've followed the entire movie will play into the event, yet everything happens incredibly fast, most of the characters killed in passing. The violence is not glorified and is actually terrifying to watch, incredibly suspenseful and intense.

I had a few problems with this film though, especially the ending. The movie ends with the killer Eric cornering two of the main character's in a freezer. The movie ends here and I stare at the screen wishing for a resolution or for one of the other supporting characters to enter the room and save the day. This movie left me unfulfilled and with a bad taste in my mouth, absolutely shocked by what I had witnessed. This film didn't need a happy ending, but it did need an ending. The other problem I had with this film is that Eric practices his shooting by playing an absolutely horrible videogame on his computer. It looks like crap, even by 90s standards, and is ridiculously over the top, the games only objective to stand in an open white area shooting pedestrians.

Despite its flaws I found Elephant to be an incredibly powerful film. The title refers to two possible meanings; one being that people can never notice an obvious problem, and the other is that an entire story will always be missing information when being told by certain characters. This somewhat makes the open ending reasonable, as the story can't continue passed the boundaries of our characters' perspectives. The movie is incredibly powerful and I thought of it as an incredibly powerful film that depicted school shootings without being stylized or glorified. Its an abruptly disturbing film and tells a powerful and gripping story, although it is very slow moving. Elephant is the best movie to ever try to depict a subject as terrifying and taboo as school shootings.

Rating: 8/10