(2003, 80 min) Continuing to film with the minimalistic style of Gerry, writer-director Gus Van Sant hauntingly distills the events surrounding a Columbine-like high school shooting to its most basic elements. In taking the time to get to know several sets of interlinked students, the tragedy becomes more profound yet even more senseless. Perhaps echoing the frustration of endless news coverage that demands explanations, however superficial, Van Sant introduces many possible causes and debunks them: deficient parents, peer pressure, drug use, insecurity, sexual issues (gay and straight) — in short, life in a typical high school. The easy availability of guns and violent entertainment may be contributors, but are they triggers, facilitators, or mere conveniences? Much of Elephant is shot from a first-person-shooter video game perspective, but it's hard to imagine a movie so grueling being an inspiration to violence. The identity of the shooters isn't even revealed until halfway through, forcing the audience into a fruitless guessing game, a search for nonexistent answers. These are misunderstood kids, and there's no way an 80-minute movie is going to understand them either. Instead, Van Sant lets us watch, intimately, and maybe experience just a little bit of what it was like for an entire generation to lose its innocence. And that's more than enough.
© TLA Entertainment Group
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