|
ELEPHANT Send This Review to a Friend
A disturbing, chilling atmosphere hovers over Gus Van Sant's "Elephant," his riff on the Columbine school massacre. The film was part of the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival and then shown in the New York Film Festival. Van Sant, who wrote, directed and edited the work, teasingly inches toward the ultimate shootings. This isn't a documentary, although it often feels like one. The director doesn't add anything new in the way of understanding, being content to capture the terror and the random deaths of the victims.
He does this by setting the scene and showing us the every day movements of some who will die and some who won't. For the grisly climax he unites the two killers, who display casualness that is particularly frightening. Able to get a private arsenal, they arm themselves to the teeth and joyfully mow down their targets as if they were shooting squirrels.
Van Sant used student actors and filmed in an abandoned Portland, Oregon, school. He is fond of shots down hallways and repeating certain scenes from different angles. The film inches along, slowly building and this provides heightened tension.
At the same time, the lack of any depth or insight about the killers makes the film a stylistic exercise and what emotion there is comes purely from the final shock of it all. "Elephant," which won the Palme d"Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is gripping in its way but at the end, one may feel the revisit was unnecessary since we already know how easy it is to get guns and have read and heard so much about the Columbine tragedy. An HBO and Fine Line Features release.
|