A movie I've been meaning to watch for a long time but never got around to it for whatever reason was Elephant by Gus Van Sant. I have now watched it and am left in thought, something that rarely happens with a movie. Not because it's a surrealistic movie with a complicated plot and artistic view, like Eraserhead, and not because of some message I have to try and figure out. It's more of an idea where I'm left just thinking about the characters and general tone of the movie.
If you don't know what this movie is, it's part of Gus Van Sant's "Death Trilogy" where he explores three different ideas of death based on real stories (although in fictionalized areas). This particular one is about a school shooting somewhat (obviously) based around the Columbine shooting. Flat out this is not a movie for everyone, it's actually almost more of a niche crowd. Not because of disturbing content or anything like that, but more because of how it's filmed and how the movie progresses. This is what I actually consider the most interesting part of the whole film and what, unfortunately, a lot of people just won't understand (to no fault of their own) and even if they do, may not care. The idea of it is simple enough, there really isn't any explanation needed as to where the plot is going or anything like that, it's how it's told that really drew me in.
To Gus Van Sant's credit, he does one of my favorite filming techniques that is extremely underused; long tracking shots. Today directors prefer quick cuts in film because it's easier to make and you don't need as much acting talent to finish a scene (just look at any Michael Bay movie). It's extremely difficult to achieve because everyone must hit their mark or the whole shot is wasted, which can be up to 4 or 5 minutes of footage. In this respect, the tracking shots are amazing. Granted the acting isn't the best (everyone's an amateur) but they can still go up to 5 minutes without fucking up in a single sequence and how the tracking shots are presented is remarkable. They don't take place over a tiny area or room, they span an entire campus. the camera will follow a student from the outside yard, into the halls, through the lunch area, outside between areas, and finally at the character's destination without cutting at all. All of which have students doing whatever it is they do before school and during. It's really quite beautiful every time a sequence like this happens. They're also shot from different angles where you can see the tracking shot in the background of another character (which presents some continuity errors but they're forgivable).
This brings me to the characters. Sometimes after I watch a movie I read message boards (although I never talk on them) just to see what people thought or perhaps get different perspectives and the biggest complaint I saw was the lack of development. Some argued Gus just did a shitty job, some think there was enough. One argument I saw was that Gus wanted you to just see the characters as they were because in media when we hear things happen we don't see a personalization. I disagree with all of these. There is very little character development, that I agree to, but I feel Gus did this on purpose. I think he wanted to make the characters a stereotypical shell that you could inject people you knew into, which makes the story more personalized. Everyone's name is generic, but the point wasn't to assign names, it was for you to assign classmates you had to these people. The punk, the jock and his girlfriend, the girls that act like bitches to everyone, etc. If you think back to your high school days, you could probably assign every single one of these people a name based on someone you knew bringing the shooting home. For a subject matter such as this, I think it's genius, however, like I said earlier, not everyone will see that.
The part of this movie that will really pull people away from it is not the fact that there's little character development, the story is already known from the outset, or even bad acting. It's the fact that this is supposed to be filmed like an average day of school. Dialogue is completely irrelevant to what's going to happen for the most part; it's just regular teen conversations. As nice as the long takes are to look at, they aren't meant to end up somewhere specific, and there is no main character at all. And this all goes on for an hour (movie run time is 81 minutes). The shooting doesn't happen until the end and it's not a balls to the wall action like Rampage or something similar. Gus uses fairly realistic sounding weapons and paces it with no music, just the sound effects of the area being shot up. For me, this works in the films favor. It really gets the point across that everyone's just doing business as usual, no one suspects anything is going to be any different at the end of the day, then all of a sudden people start dying. It's supposed to lull you as a viewer where you know something terrible is going to happen, you are completely helpless to stop it, and none of the characters really deserve their fate. This last part in particular is painfully shown when the least deserving person is the first to be killed. If this sounds like it'd be boring to you, it probably will be. Like I said, it's a good movie, but it's for a niche audience.
If you do decide to check it out, do not expect their to be some underlying message as to why the massacre happened. Don't expect all of the character arcs to be tightly closed at the end, it's not that type of movie. It's not meant to explain why these kids shoot up the school, it's meant to make you feel the pain of it happening. Part of keeping some of the character arcs open is to show that in a chaotic situation, no one knows what the hell's going on. Who's dead, who made it out? Sometimes it's shown, other times it's assumed. to some degree I think this is a smart idea on Gus' part because he's admitting he doesn't have a clue why these kids would do it. All we can do is assume, make up scapegoats, and blame everything else but ourselves. Perhaps these kids could've had shitty childhoods, perhaps they were picked on at school, perhaps it was too many violent games and metal, or perhaps they were just born sociopaths and society doesn't understand why. This movie is a personal experience, not a tool used to explain anything about these situations.
So do I recommend the movie? Absolutely, but like I said, it's not for everyone. I got it for $6 at F.Y.E. and I got more than my money's worth out of it. Others may not be so lucky as to see the movie how I do. I do believe though that if you go into this movie and match up characters to people you knew, you'll get a lot more out of it through nostalgia of things you used to do during high school, and what you would've felt if you'd gone through the situation. Gus Van Sant did a great job on this film and I commend him, but I still can't forgive him for remaking Psycho.
