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Elephant
***1/2
Cinema
Review - February 23, 2004
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
81 minutes. Written and directed by Gus Van Sant. Produced by Dany Wolf.
Starring Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Jordan
Taylor, Carrie Finklea, Nicole George, Brittany Mountain, Alicia Miles, Kristen
Hicks, Bennie Dixon.
I have my own theories about why Eric Harris and
Dylan Klebold went into Columbine High School four years ago with an arsenal
of guns and home-made bombs, killing thirteen students. I think it's described
pretty simply. They were sick of being bullied, depressed as most teenagers
are, not able to see a way out. Combine their need to lash out with the fact
they had access to guns, and hey, you've got a massacre.
"I can resist anything except temptation," said
Oscar Wilde, which sort of relates here because violent fantasies are one
thing and knowing you can carry them out is another. We all have days where,
jeez, we could just kill someone. We don't, because we're not crazy, and
even a lot of unbalanced people avoid becoming violent because they don't
have easy access to weapons. If they did, who knows what could happen --
it only takes one time to make the wrong decision and for things to be changed
forever. Without getting into debates about how America needs to go about
gun control, the tragedy in Littleton is one occasion where being able to
get hands on weapons made all the difference to a lot of people's
lives.
The strange thing about Gus Van Sant's
"Elephant" is that it doesn't deal with such issues. Politics
is not its business, or theory its intent. That is for another movie -- not
a better one, or a worse one, just a different one. Van Sant does everything
he can to strip away subjectivity, and just observe, record. Is that possible?
In the movies, isn't every choice of costume, casting and framing loaded
with unconscious judgement? Well, yes. Usually. But somehow Van Sant gets
rid of it.
He follows a kid called Elias, who confidently
takes photos of people in the park and develops them in the school dark room.
And John, who wanders around aimlessly, one of those guys who gets away with
pale skin and slouching because he makes it look like a sexy alternative
rock pose. There is a trio of girls who talk about, like, boys, and, like,
makeup, and like, how totally fattening their lunch is. We get glimpses of
Bennie, a tall tough guy, and Kristen, who works in the
library.
They're just going about their day. In their costumes
and some of their actions, they fit into personality types, but I never got
the feeling that they were dressed up to be loaded with commentary -- Van
Sant has cast real high-schoolers, whose characters are often named after
the actors, and who presumably dress like they do in real life. Elias takes
his snaps, John gets to school late and receives a detention, Kristen walks
around with the book cart. There are a few shots that seem silly: The film
makes a point of following the twitty girls into the bathroom, where the
camera stays outside the stalls and we can hear them puking in unison. And
the social outcasts, Alex and Eric, are seen leering at violent video games
with daydreamy fascination.
On the whole, though, it's pretty normal stuff.
The camera style makes it interesting and original while working to drain
the filmmaking of pointedness or suggestion: When the characters are walking,
it floats with them from behind, in exact correlation with their movements.
When they sit and talk, it drifts past their faces in a straight line, creating
in us a dreamy fascination, and on its own part refusing to create deliberate
compositions and make a cinematic point about the images it
captures.
It is plain. Banal. Ordinary. Until it just isn't,
and the guns come in. "Elephant" doesn't want to make us feel the frustration
of high school life that leads people to go mad with automatic weapons. It
regards things with detachment. It steps back and sees the massacre in such
real, unadorned terms, that it makes the violence seem completely without
the release that the killers thought it would have. We're shocked when we
see people get shot, because it's such a random and unnecessary blast of
evil. At the end of it all, there's a numbness. Why did they bother? What
did it serve? Art holds a mirror up to life, and when you hold a mirror up
to high school killers, they look alone and bumbling and pathetic, blasting
away while the ordinary rhythms of the air stay as ordinary and blank as
ever.
COPYRIGHT©
2004 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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