Presumably based on the Columbine massacre, Elephant is both hypnotic and disturbing.
Almost nothing happens throughout the course of the film. There is hardly any dialogue. What little remains is inconsequential teenage chatter. There are long periods of silence where, in the absence of any onscreen action, you are left to listen to the ambient noise of the school. The camera slowly roams the sterile neon lit school corridors creating a sedate dream like pace as we sleepwalk to the horrific denouement.
<*dv_1*> Gus Van Sant creates an emotionally blank and vacuous high school world. Populated by jocks and prom queens with just as many problems as the geeks, freaks and nerds. The pressure to conform and the casual alienation of some students, is presented as fact rather than crippling. These are ordinary kids not victims to be excused.
Van Sant is not here to provide glib or easy answers as to why close friends Eric and Alex decide to blow up their school. There are nods to lax gun laws, dysfunctional parenting and homophobia but Van Sant seems to be trying to offer a far more disturbing motivation.
Elephant depicts a generation of children anaesthetised to their own or others feelings. Cut adrift from reality they are able to plot the murder of others in a moral vacuum. The dividing line between Eric and Alex and anyone else at their school is paper thin.
<*dv_0*> The climax as Eric and Alex begin to execute their fellow students is at once shocking and, oddly, not. It is as if you have become immunised by the hollowness leaving you as incapable of feeling as anybody in the film. As they gun down their classmates the camera focuses on their impassive faces rendering you strangely dislocated from the terrible consequences of their actions. You need to remember that that something very close to this actually happened and, if Van Sant is right, precious little reason to think that it will not again.
Elephant is neither good nor bad. It was not made to entertain. Rather to make you think. If you are prepared to do that then it is worth seeing
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