Chris Knipp
11-12-2003, 01:28 AM
Elephant is as cunningly constructed as it is inexplicable. It's a tightly
woven web of aimless moments at a Portland high school. They crisscross, all
leading up to death. Violence is perpetrated by two boys from the high
school, who massacre their fellow students and teachers with newly bought
automatic weapons, as at Columbine. Along the way, an encounter between two
boys in an outside hallway keeps recurring, shot from different directions
and focusing on different kids: a trio of bulemic cuties (Carrie, Nicole and
Brittany); a football hunk they admire (Nathan); a homely girl loner who
won't wear shorts for gym (Michele); and the two boys themselves, one posing
(John), the other taking his picture (Eli). There's a scene in a classroom
where being gay is discussed: the camera moves slowly across the wall,
occasionally passing over a face. Another scene shows the cuties talking in
the crowded cafeteria, and afterwards going to the girls' room to throw up.
As Elephant begins, bleach-blond John (John Robinson) finds his dad (Timothy
Bottoms) driving drunk, stops the car and takes the wheel. He parks the car
outside the high school and goes in, leaving the keys at a front desk for a
relative to retrieve later. He gets disciplined for tardiness. That's the
whole story of living in an alcoholic family, right there.
A long walk through campus follows Nathan, the football star. The camera is
close to him yet feels distant, as with Eli, whom it also follows around.
The camera is like a gun: its eye is indifferent. There are misfits and kids
in niches, but they’re all as mysterious as the boys who do the killing. Yet
Van Sant¹s sensitivity to teenagers shows constantly because he is recessive
as always, a casual, interactive director, who lets them take over. This,
despite obvious hints at motives for the killings - exclusion, tossed food,
violent video games, suburban anomie, glances at Hitler. But they aren¹t
explanations. No one makes a statement, though some plead for mercy.
We keep hearing Für Elise and the Moonlight Sonata, played by the boy
(Eric) - we discover two thirds of the way through -- who is planning the
massacre. His cohort (Alex) plays a kill game on a laptop and surfs for
weapons. They watch a documentary on TV about the Nazis. A package comes to
the door: an automatic weapon. They practice shooting it in the basement.
There's a time elapse sequence of sky and moving clouds and a thunderstorm.
The thunder sounds like gunshots. This is an interlude before the real
storm.
The improvised acting by real Portland students creates a sense of reality
beyond either documentary or drama. There's a feeling of daily-ness and
triviality that's as vivid as it is pointless. This equates with the violent
acts that come when Alex and Eric return to the school armed and costumed to
kill. They're invisible compared with the popular girls, or the football
hunk, or the photographer Eli, or the cute blond caretaker for his drunk
dad, John, or even the nerdy girl, Michele. But when they kill, they're
visible. Even so, the acts are meaningless, and in Elephant that links the
horror they commit to the daily life of the school.
Elephant makes more sense as a part of Van Sant’s work, if you¹ve seen
”Gerry”. In both films, the camera follows guys walking. Just walking.
There's a kind of Zen abstraction about the director¹s vision in these new
films. They're saturated with a heightened real-time awareness and a sense
of menace behind the ordinary.
It¹s a curiously beautiful poem about death. It conveys a teenage version of
the banality of evil. We get so deep into monotony that the violence comes
as a horrific shock. More than banal, this crime is meaningless. But it's
not without a motive that all the students may feel: the humiliations, the
sheer boredom, the unfair discipline, and the way high school forcibly
warehouses young people who are often fully ready for life. When the
assistant principal is executed, we know why. He was a pouting petty tyrant,
a bland prison guard. It’s the combination of abstract poetic beauty and
sensitivity to teenage life that makes Elephant, with its chilling finale, a
remarkable film. Elephant is threaded through with emptiness and peace. The
rhythmic camerawork and the big spaces of the school are calming, like the
musical themes. The film has its own style that says: Don't judge me too
quickly. Don't come up with easy answers.
American viewers want answers about Columbine as they wanted revenge for
9/11. People want to know if the boys are gay (no, but the director is), and
what their kiss in the shower before their killing spree means. That
Elephant doesn’t provide answers explains why, while at Cannes the film got
the Palme d’Or and the Director's Prize, in the USA there have been some
very dismissive reviews.
Ten characters are identified by the inter-titles that act as chapter
headings for the film. Each acquires some degree of back-story in the
viewer's mind. With little sense of emphasis till the end, the “narrative”
becomes hopelessly detailed, much more so than any short description of it
can convey. And yet still mysterious: chat-lines are accordingly crowded with speculation about the characters.
Elephant may prove as thought provoking as Bowling for Columbine, and it's
infinitely more artistic. There are already two other Columbine dramas, Zero
Day (Ben Coccio) and Home Room (Paul F. Ryan), but none is likely to have
Elephant's evocative power.
www.chrisknipp.com
woven web of aimless moments at a Portland high school. They crisscross, all
leading up to death. Violence is perpetrated by two boys from the high
school, who massacre their fellow students and teachers with newly bought
automatic weapons, as at Columbine. Along the way, an encounter between two
boys in an outside hallway keeps recurring, shot from different directions
and focusing on different kids: a trio of bulemic cuties (Carrie, Nicole and
Brittany); a football hunk they admire (Nathan); a homely girl loner who
won't wear shorts for gym (Michele); and the two boys themselves, one posing
(John), the other taking his picture (Eli). There's a scene in a classroom
where being gay is discussed: the camera moves slowly across the wall,
occasionally passing over a face. Another scene shows the cuties talking in
the crowded cafeteria, and afterwards going to the girls' room to throw up.
As Elephant begins, bleach-blond John (John Robinson) finds his dad (Timothy
Bottoms) driving drunk, stops the car and takes the wheel. He parks the car
outside the high school and goes in, leaving the keys at a front desk for a
relative to retrieve later. He gets disciplined for tardiness. That's the
whole story of living in an alcoholic family, right there.
A long walk through campus follows Nathan, the football star. The camera is
close to him yet feels distant, as with Eli, whom it also follows around.
The camera is like a gun: its eye is indifferent. There are misfits and kids
in niches, but they’re all as mysterious as the boys who do the killing. Yet
Van Sant¹s sensitivity to teenagers shows constantly because he is recessive
as always, a casual, interactive director, who lets them take over. This,
despite obvious hints at motives for the killings - exclusion, tossed food,
violent video games, suburban anomie, glances at Hitler. But they aren¹t
explanations. No one makes a statement, though some plead for mercy.
We keep hearing Für Elise and the Moonlight Sonata, played by the boy
(Eric) - we discover two thirds of the way through -- who is planning the
massacre. His cohort (Alex) plays a kill game on a laptop and surfs for
weapons. They watch a documentary on TV about the Nazis. A package comes to
the door: an automatic weapon. They practice shooting it in the basement.
There's a time elapse sequence of sky and moving clouds and a thunderstorm.
The thunder sounds like gunshots. This is an interlude before the real
storm.
The improvised acting by real Portland students creates a sense of reality
beyond either documentary or drama. There's a feeling of daily-ness and
triviality that's as vivid as it is pointless. This equates with the violent
acts that come when Alex and Eric return to the school armed and costumed to
kill. They're invisible compared with the popular girls, or the football
hunk, or the photographer Eli, or the cute blond caretaker for his drunk
dad, John, or even the nerdy girl, Michele. But when they kill, they're
visible. Even so, the acts are meaningless, and in Elephant that links the
horror they commit to the daily life of the school.
Elephant makes more sense as a part of Van Sant’s work, if you¹ve seen
”Gerry”. In both films, the camera follows guys walking. Just walking.
There's a kind of Zen abstraction about the director¹s vision in these new
films. They're saturated with a heightened real-time awareness and a sense
of menace behind the ordinary.
It¹s a curiously beautiful poem about death. It conveys a teenage version of
the banality of evil. We get so deep into monotony that the violence comes
as a horrific shock. More than banal, this crime is meaningless. But it's
not without a motive that all the students may feel: the humiliations, the
sheer boredom, the unfair discipline, and the way high school forcibly
warehouses young people who are often fully ready for life. When the
assistant principal is executed, we know why. He was a pouting petty tyrant,
a bland prison guard. It’s the combination of abstract poetic beauty and
sensitivity to teenage life that makes Elephant, with its chilling finale, a
remarkable film. Elephant is threaded through with emptiness and peace. The
rhythmic camerawork and the big spaces of the school are calming, like the
musical themes. The film has its own style that says: Don't judge me too
quickly. Don't come up with easy answers.
American viewers want answers about Columbine as they wanted revenge for
9/11. People want to know if the boys are gay (no, but the director is), and
what their kiss in the shower before their killing spree means. That
Elephant doesn’t provide answers explains why, while at Cannes the film got
the Palme d’Or and the Director's Prize, in the USA there have been some
very dismissive reviews.
Ten characters are identified by the inter-titles that act as chapter
headings for the film. Each acquires some degree of back-story in the
viewer's mind. With little sense of emphasis till the end, the “narrative”
becomes hopelessly detailed, much more so than any short description of it
can convey. And yet still mysterious: chat-lines are accordingly crowded with speculation about the characters.
Elephant may prove as thought provoking as Bowling for Columbine, and it's
infinitely more artistic. There are already two other Columbine dramas, Zero
Day (Ben Coccio) and Home Room (Paul F. Ryan), but none is likely to have
Elephant's evocative power.
www.chrisknipp.com