elephant

[godardian]

I finally saw this as well.  Normally we get movies like this first or second week, but for whatever reason, this one took longer.  I've been avoiding this thread.

Now that Ive read it, I have to say that I disagree with at least one thing all of you had to say and agree with at least one thing most of you had to say.

I thought the film was great (not the best of the year, but still great).

One of my favorite scenes was with the nerdish girl (the one who wouldn't wear shorts, I forget her name already) where she's in the locker room and the other girls are making fun of her.  What I liked about it was the way it was done... through camera work and sound mixing... really, you can't tell that they're talking about her, you just assume they are... and so does she... this is what it's like to be unpopular in highschool... it doesn't matter who someone is making fun of, they may as well be talking about you.

I didn't really like the Benny scene... it seemed kind of gimicy.. like it was a set up that only works once... maybe he was intentionally breaking the "rules" he set in the film with the name titles, but I didn't think it was necessary.

oh yeah... It doesn't matter whether the two kids are gay or not, but assuming that they aren't is just like assuming that they are.

I think this is my favorite post about it so far... I, too thought the bit about the girl who wouldn't wear shorts was observant, poignant, and true. And you're right on about the gay thing. A kiss doesn't make someone gay, but it doesn't mean they're not, either. It's sort of beside the point. Not the kiss, but what it supposedly might "mean."

[pete]

if a nerd girl who wouldn't wear shorts is observant and poignant then I guess every show on TGIF is observant and poignant.

[SoNowThen]

So, um, I just saw Elephant. Camerawork great, sound design great, editing great (and I'm glad Van Sant took his credit there).

SPOILERS-----------------------------------------------

In keeping with my attempt to post the unfiltered truth about how I feel, here I go. This is not gonna be a very nice post. I don't wish to start any fights, but I feel this is the only way to respond to this film. So here goes...

I got incredible satisfaction from the last third of this movie. You have no idea. I guess this movie taught me a lot about myself, and I can't give you any other explanation except that it just felt good, like a release or something. When that nerdy girl got shot, I was so happy. But not near as happy as when the killer finally tracked the good looking couple down in the freezer. I had to know they got killed too, to really feel payed off. I'm sorry. This is probably the reverse effect Van Sant and Co wanted when people watched this film, but I just enjoyed the slaughter so much. It could have been that this high school was so very different than mine, that it just didn't have any personal effect on me in any negative way. Interestingly enough, the only thing I really cared about in a positive way was the fact that the dad didn't get hurt. So I dunno...

There were, however, three scenes where I "felt" Van Sant too much, they were a bit ham handed, and didn't work, but still didn't really detract from the film. They were: the class-in-a-circle gay talk, the three chicks throwing up at the same time, and the hitler movie. The last two were just way too on the nose for a movie this stark, and the first one just seemed put in there to satisfy a personal agenda of the director.

But anyway, the moral of the story is, I guess, that I'm a sick fucker who doesn't put much stock in human life. Or maybe we were supposed to be excited to follow the killers. Like I said, I dunno...

...a haunting, intriguing film. Probably my 4th favorite this year.

[godardian]

if a nerd girl who wouldn't wear shorts is observant and poignant then I guess every show on TGIF is observant and poignant.

I never tire of quoting Andrew Sarris: "It's not WHAT, it's HOW." Besides, even on a cheesy, for-young-adults level, it would be more Judy Blume than TGIF...

Yeah, I'd have to say SoNowThen is pretty perceptive in realizing his interpretation of the film is rather sick and the opposite of what was intended... how can someone so religious (moreso than anyone else here, maybe) so consistently seem to be actively going against what their religion supposedly stands for? In my experience, many people turn to religion as a salve for their own misanthropy, but that doesn't seem to be working out too well for you, SoNowThen!  That's another thread, probably...

It's odd to me not to be able to feel you can relate to or have anything in common with people who aren't just like you or a high school that's really different from yours. Like, how specifically identical to your school would it have had to have been for you not to feel glad that genuinely innocent people were getting slaughtered in the halls?

Also, most metropolitan high schools have gay-straight alliances (which I think is much healthier and more productive than exclusively gay groups, though those were a sort of step back in the day). That was probably more observational and objective than the other things mentioned as subpar bits. He wanted to show that this wasn't a high school where people were outlandishly or openly persectued in some martyred, after-school special way. And the conversation they were having, like most other things the camera records in the film, was really everyday stuff to the point of being mundane, and not really indicative of any kind of agenda. That's exactly what people would be talking about in a group like that.

[pete]

but throwing in that shorts bit IS how.  Trying to depict high school in a realistic manner is what.  Or if you wanna narrow it down, shooting it in super shallow depth of field is how.  The cinematography did good, but content-wise it not only portrayed high school in an almost caricature-like fashion, it also spiced it up by making killers' quirks according to Time and Newsweek.  It's Frederick Wiseman's high school with an arthouse shootout sequence in the end, but Wiseman's observations are 40 years old and throwing a bulemic twist on the good ol' insecure girl stereotype does not cut it.

[SoNowThen]

Hmmm, yeah, I dunno, Godardian. Having a night to think about it, is suppose I could try to answer why I just didn't feel for anybody in the film except the dad and son. Dads and sons in movies are for me like puppy dogs, I don't wanna see anything bad happen to them. As to everyone else, well, again to be brutally honest, when Columbine happened, we sat in the lunch room of school that day (I was in grade 12, and the Taber shooting was just around the corner as well). And we had a long chat, not about how horrific it was, but about who might come and do it at our school. And sure enough, there were a bunch of kids sitting in the corner in trench coats, and I got all paranoid about them. I guess the point is, I'm so firmly entrenched in this day and age, that it doesn't surprise me a bit that someone would come to school and start shooting. I fucking hated coming to school. I hated teachers. And I saw a bunch of kids who were basically decent people, get bullied and abused by a bunch of fucks on a daily basis for no good reason other than pure cruelty. Now, this never happened to me, because I seem to make friends easily (when given the chance), but it always pissed me off when I saw a quiet, shy kid get singled out for no good reason. Now, if a kid was an agressive asshole and everyone hated him, I could care less, because he brought in on himself. Anyway, getting back to the thick of things, at the time, and to some extent I guess now, I just figured that if any shooters ever came to school, as long as the 50 or so people I liked, as well as the 3 teachers, got out okay, I couldn't care less who they gunned down. Because, if you think about it, folks could die in a car crash tomorrow, or from disease, or random murder -- if I was to get upset over every one of them, I'd be upset every waking second of my life. I'm very desensitized. I guess the circle-talk scene stood out for me because I can never remember doing that in high school, all we did was take a book, walk to class, sit in a desk, get bored out of our minds listening to teachers blather on, then get up and go to another room and do it all over again. But also, our high school didn't have a photo lab or anything like that either. But you do make a good point about what you said about the scene.

I think it's that when you have a purely improv film with non actors, all the ideas you had before going in that you sorta pre-plan, they always appear slightly forced on the story in a way that the spur of the moment stuff doesn't...

[aclockworkjj]

van sant on kcrw, interview, talking bout this movie.  here.

(real format)

[godardian]

Hmmm, yeah, I dunno, Godardian. Having a night to think about it, is suppose I could try to answer why I just didn't feel for anybody in the film except the dad and son. Dads and sons in movies are for me like puppy dogs, I don't wanna see anything bad happen to them. As to everyone else, well, again to be brutally honest, when Columbine happened, we sat in the lunch room of school that day (I was in grade 12, and the Taber shooting was just around the corner as well). And we had a long chat, not about how horrific it was, but about who might come and do it at our school. And sure enough, there were a bunch of kids sitting in the corner in trench coats, and I got all paranoid about them. I guess the point is, I'm so firmly entrenched in this day and age, that it doesn't surprise me a bit that someone would come to school and start shooting. I fucking hated coming to school. I hated teachers. And I saw a bunch of kids who were basically decent people, get bullied and abused by a bunch of fucks on a daily basis for no good reason other than pure cruelty. Now, this never happened to me, because I seem to make friends easily (when given the chance), but it always pissed me off when I saw a quiet, shy kid get singled out for no good reason. Now, if a kid was an agressive asshole and everyone hated him, I could care less, because he brought in on himself. Anyway, getting back to the thick of things, at the time, and to some extent I guess now, I just figured that if any shooters ever came to school, as long as the 50 or so people I liked, as well as the 3 teachers, got out okay, I couldn't care less who they gunned down. Because, if you think about it, folks could die in a car crash tomorrow, or from disease, or random murder -- if I was to get upset over every one of them, I'd be upset every waking second of my life. I'm very desensitized. I guess the circle-talk scene stood out for me because I can never remember doing that in high school, all we did was take a book, walk to class, sit in a desk, get bored out of our minds listening to teachers blather on, then get up and go to another room and do it all over again. But also, our high school didn't have a photo lab or anything like that either. But you do make a good point about what you said about the scene.

I think it's that when you have a purely improv film with non actors, all the ideas you had before going in that you sorta pre-plan, they always appear slightly forced on the story in a way that the spur of the moment stuff doesn't...

That actually puts it into a lot more perspective for me. I do understand how it could be gratifying to see something you view as an impersonal, apathetic, crushing institution be ground to a halt and have its own products backfire. I didn't see that in the movie myself, you understand- I think it held its cards much closer to its vest than that- but I can see much better where you're coming from now.

And I definitely understand trying to have perspective and not devaluing the huge daily losses of human life by over-romanticizing the loss of relatively privileged North American life. Still, because no one movie and no one human mind can possibly encompass and have empathy for everything in the world deserving of it, I think it's okay to empathize with the loss of life in the case of this movie. Or at least not feel gratified by it. It's not like van Sant is in sackloth and ashes over the death of Jonathan Brandis, or anything.

I'm probably willing to accept a lot more diversity in depictions of high-school life because my own high-school age experiences were very unusual and unlikely ever to be depicted in a movie, so it's easier for me to suspend my disbelief.

[meatball]

but throwing in that shorts bit IS how.  Trying to depict high school in a realistic manner is what.  Or if you wanna narrow it down, shooting it in super shallow depth of field is how.  The cinematography did good, but content-wise it not only portrayed high school in an almost caricature-like fashion, it also spiced it up by making killers' quirks according to Time and Newsweek.  It's Frederick Wiseman's high school with an arthouse shootout sequence in the end, but Wiseman's observations are 40 years old and throwing a bulemic twist on the good ol' insecure girl stereotype does not cut it.

Yea.. I saw elephant two weeks ago.. and really couldn't think of what I could possibly say on this thread. Basically, while I was impressed (at first) at the shallow depth of field and single takes... it was like drinking a flat soda. And the soda kept coming.

And I agree with pete's statements.. speaking as a recent high school graduate (2002). The friend I went to see this with also had a negative feeling about this film... And, I say this.. all very reluctantly, because we both really wanted to love this movie. Didn't turn out that way.

The one thing I really liked about the movie was the beginning with the dad and son. I connected to those two characters and anticipated the arrival of the brother who would pick up the dad. Then, an hour and twenty minutes went by without seeing any of these people again and my connection was severed.. and the story and scenes dragged on from there.

[SoNowThen]

Now 2nd day after seeing Elephant, and I can really see now what a brilliant film it was, and how provocative, and challenging, and brave in not taking any easy ways out. It would have been easy to show the killers as monsters, or to show some part of their society that could have been the "reason" they did what they did, but Van Sant didn't fall into that trap. They very fact that I had the reaction I did at the end basically shows how he allowed for almost any emotional viewpoint to come into play. That's responsible filmmaking. The results and reactions are sometimes scary and disturbing, but that's a fact of life.

Also, the more it sits in my head, I think my favorite scene is the one where the blonde killer has the principal on the floor, and basically tells him that if they don't kill him, there are hundereds of people out there just like them, and one of them eventually will. Chilling stuff, and intensely true.

[pete]

wait, making the film claiming to be devoid of any point of view (which is impossible) by showing the killers as an analgram of mainstream media portrayal is now "responsible filmmaking"?  Gus Van Sant said nothing because he had nothing to say or add to the subject, and has no idea what it's like to be a teenager anymore, let alone any insight into what a massacre must be like.
So Kubrick's slanted portrayal/ idea of war is "irresponsible filmmaking" then?
It's kind of depressing that Do the Right Thing was praised because it contained so many points of view, and 14 years later, a movie is praised because it lacks any point of view (or claims to lack one anyways).

[Ghostboy]

But that's comparing apples and oranges. Not having a point of view is as valid as having multiple points of view. It just depends on what the filmmaker is trying to get across.

[mutinyco]

I think Kubrick was fairly unsympathetic. I think Elephant very much relied on his sense of distance. He might've thought war was absurd or horrible, but he always observed it from a removed POV. It's not that Elephant is without a POV. The way it arrived at its objective stance is by being almost totally subjective -- it's just the multitude of subjectivity created a film without a single view point.

[SoNowThen]

Well put.

[pete]

I think Kubrick was fairly unsympathetic. I think Elephant very much relied on his sense of distance. He might've thought war was absurd or horrible, but he always observed it from a removed POV. It's not that Elephant is without a POV. The way it arrived at its objective stance is by being almost totally subjective -- it's just the multitude of subjectivity created a film without a single view point.

I think comparing kubrick movies to elephant, now that's apples and oranges.

kubrick always sides with the audience, in Dr. Strangelove he mercilessly mocks his caricature characters, they're punchlines, all add up to the final detached portrayal of world destruction.  elephant attempts to get into their heads, I mean everything is shot with extremely shallow depth of field, that doesn't seem like distance to me.
It woulda worked too, had Van Sant any idea of how high school students behave.