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Elephant
on DVD (2003)
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Brief synopsis of Elephant
Gus Van Sant's drifty, eloquent, and effortlessly poignant ELEPHANT is loosely based on the massacre at Columbine High School. (On April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado two 17-year-old boys fired semi-automatic weapons on their high school classmates, killing 13, injuring 25, and then taking their own lives.) Van Sant's film is set in Portland, Oregon and uses non-actors chosen from an open casting call of high school students. On a crisp, sunny Autumn day, with colourful leaves on the trees and puffy clouds drifting across blue skies, students arrive at school as usual. Eli takes photographs for his portfolio, John manages problems with his alcoholic father, Acadia attends a gay-lesbian meeting, Nate plays a game of tag football, and Michelle works in the library. Meanwhile, two outsiders, Eric and Alex, harbour hatred for their peers. Each of ELEPHANT's students have unique interests and personalities, and the film respectfully emphasises their individuality. It also demonstrates how school is an unpredictable blender where students' differences are constantly agitated. Harris Savides' excellent photography--shot in 1:33 aspect ratio, making the movie a cube in the centre of the screen--follows and floats, sometimes blurring and juxtaposing the light to achieve an ethereal mood; while Leslie Shatz's ambient sound design and a soundtrack of soft Beethoven piano music completes that feeling. The film is structured in brief overlapping chapters all taking place on the morning of the 11:35 A.M. attack.
ELEPHANT won the Palme D'Or and Best Director at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
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Critics Reviews
Radio Times
With its title taken from Alan Clarke's 1989 BBC drama about violence in Northern Ireland, director Gus Van Sant's Palme d'Or-winning film documents a normal day at an ordinary American high school. Except this day ends in a senseless massacre, much like the Columbine killings to which it alludes. The main characters are real students using their actual names, and their matter-of-fact casual encounters and improvised snatched conversations are detailed in long travelling shots, often replayed from slightly different perspectives, before Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen) enter school in camouflage gear carrying internet-purchased assault weapons. It's either a disturbing yet poetic disaster movie, or an unsatisfyingly arty view of a contemporary malaise that offers no reasons or solutions. By sitting on the fence and not apportioning blame, Van Sant's experimental drama raises more questions than it answers — and that's perhaps his point.
Time Out
The surprise recipient of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2003, Van Sant's movie began life as a conventional Hollywood...
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The Independent
"...An extraordinary, sublime piece of filmmaking that unsettles as it enthrals..."
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