Elephant is the experimental Gus Van Sant film that won the Palme d'Or as best film at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, one of the world's most prestigious film awards.
Having attended that festival and seen many of the other films in competition, I was astounded that Van Sant grabbed the top prize. There were others more deserving. Then it went on to play Toronto fest in the masters program.
One concern is that these honours position Elephant as something big, bold, even grandiose. It is not.
Instead, Elephant -- named in an obscure reference to a British film about an IRA tragedy -- is acted amateurishly by amateurs and is small in scale, though it is about a big deal, the infamous Columbine school massacre.
Van Sant approaches it in an oblique, almost casual manner, and in a fictional construct. This is neither a documentary about Columbine -- although it looks like one because of the "witness" shooting style of the presentation -- nor a drama re-creating the people and events of Columbine -- although there are many parallels to the historical record.
In this version, Van Sant's hand-held camera follows a series of high school students, who play themselves to some extent, as they go about their daily business. I mean follow literally: Often, the camera is just behind the head of the student and we feel as if we're walking along with the boy or girl. Their actions are routine. Kids take photos, walk long corridors, interact casually, bitch, pose, hang out, waste time, do the things youths do in or near school.
The same moments in time are returned to repeatedly, but in each new take we see those moments from a different character's point of view. Oddly, because we are initially not sure why, the tension builds. Eventually, the inevitable happens, a series of violent acts perpetrated by two students.
The two shooters (played with a creepy authenticity by Alex Frost and Eric Deulen) arm themselves for the massacre. Then they chillingly, seemingly without emotion, go about their business. Van Sant chooses not to show the gore.
The writer-director also seems not to take any kind of moral stance, preferring to let the viewer react. In part, that also means he avoids real analysis, letting events speak for themselves. While he introduces a probable gay relationship between the two assailants -- needlessly -- there is little else that tries to probe their psyches.
My concerns about Elephant do not mean that the film lacks any impact. Actually, Van Sant's blunt approach means that the violent events at the end are more visceral than 1,001 blood-splattered deaths by samurai sword in Tarantino's Kill Bill.
The problem, then, is that Elephant does not forward our understanding of the forces of human nature that lead to a Columbine. Instead, it thrusts us into the same state of disbelief and horror we felt watching the TV coverage of the real event. That is something -- but it is not enough at this point.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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