elephant

[TheVoiceOfNick]

goddammit Nick, HOW DARE you not know the meaning of the word "subjectivity"!  You party foul.  You misinformed, underedumacated, party foul.
You better learn the meaning of that word and get back to cowboy dude, 'cause I don't think it was very nice of you to use the word like that.  Jackass.

But what IS subjectivity?  The term subjectivity should be objective, but is something so objective really objective, or can it have some subjectivity and be open to interpretation.  This whole post seems very subjective to me...

Ok, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton did it so much better in Love and Death...

[mutinyco]

Yeah, I think we're at that point in this thread where both sides are totally entrenched and not budging, so it starts becoming repetitious. I would like to stress one thing: the kids aren't gay. In fact the camera goes out of its way to suggest otherwise. The night before the massacre there's an overhead shot panning from Eric to Alex as they're asleep. Note: They're both on different beds. They're NOT sleeping together. The kiss was about human connection. That's why one of them says just before the kiss that he's never kissed anybody before. It's not about kissing another male, but just to have had that experience before he dies.

And calm down about your comparisons between Kubrick and "this director". I would consider Gus Van Sant fairly well-established. He's been around for nearly 20 years as a feature director, making some great indies. He got his Oscar nom for Good Will Hunting, then did some Hollywood crap. Now he's back innovating. That said, Elephant was one of the only really innovative films I've seen all year.

[pete]

goddammit Nick, HOW DARE you not know the meaning of the word "subjectivity"!  You party foul.  You misinformed, underedumacated, party foul.
You better learn the meaning of that word and get back to cowboy dude, 'cause I don't think it was very nice of you to use the word like that.  Jackass.

But what IS subjectivity?  The term subjectivity should be objective, but is something so objective really objective, or can it have some subjectivity and be open to interpretation.  This whole post seems very subjective to me...

Ok, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton did it so much better in Love and Death...

I was kidding Nick.  That was facetitiousness.

[TheVoiceOfNick]

goddammit Nick, HOW DARE you not know the meaning of the word "subjectivity"!  You party foul.  You misinformed, underedumacated, party foul.
You better learn the meaning of that word and get back to cowboy dude, 'cause I don't think it was very nice of you to use the word like that.  Jackass.

But what IS subjectivity?  The term subjectivity should be objective, but is something so objective really objective, or can it have some subjectivity and be open to interpretation.  This whole post seems very subjective to me...

Ok, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton did it so much better in Love and Death...

I was kidding Nick.  That was facetitiousness.

Me too... but I was being sarcastic... ...

[SoNowThen]

Um, sorry to interrupt the movie discussion here... but I was wondering if anybody heard if/when this will play in Canada (particularily Alberta) or where I could check to find out.

And it seems the website is not working...

[godardian]

I would like to stress one thing: the kids aren't gay. In fact the camera goes out of its way to suggest otherwise. The night before the massacre there's an overhead shot panning from Eric to Alex as they're asleep. Note: They're both on different beds. They're NOT sleeping together. The kiss was about human connection.

I think the idea of a kiss being asexual and just about connection is a beautiful one.

But "stressing" that these kids are NOT gay... seems a little defensive to me. Not having seen the film, I can't really make any judgment, and it really doesn't matter to me if they are or they aren't, but you can absolutely be gay without ever having sex. Just because they're not having sex doesn't mean it's impossible that there's any attraction. So, unless you have a more concrete example than the one you cite... I think it's probably, like much else in the film from the sound of it, up for discussion and not a closed issue...?

[samsong]

About the kiss, I personally think it was to emphasize how alienated the two boys have become.  At that moment before the shooting, the kiss -- to me at least -- shows how they were all that mattered to each other.

Then again all the other theories I've heard and read are all true too (though I personally think the homosexuality route is too easy).  That's where the beauty of the film lies.  It doesn't judge, nor does it try to come to any conclusions about its characters' actions.  The film is an exploration of youth and ultimately, nothing can really be concluded about it.  

What Van Sant achieves with Elephant is pure art, even in its seemingly contrived moments (the girls throwing up... I personally thought it was Gus's way of attacking stereotypes about youth, throwing it in the midst of things as a juxtaposition to everything that preceded... the state of grace, tne unrecognizable representation of high school as compared to prior films, etc.  It also works as another way of showing how degraded youth has become in a very up front, almost tangible way.  But that's jut me...).  Elephant doesn't try to conclude or understand, but to empathize and to sympathize with its subject, whatever it might be for the audience member watching, the most obvious and seemingly universal being the themes of the dying beauty of youth and the degraded state of not just high school but America in itself (I might be overshooting it there but from what I've read, that's what people have come to think).  Whatever you take from this film is your own, and I think Gus Van Sant did such a brilliant job and making a movie that truly stirs up thought and emotion without telling you what they should be.  In that sense, I think Van Sant has created THE most successful art film in some time and it gets my vote for best film of the year for how refreshing its vision is and how frustratingly challenging it is.  I haven't come across a film as complex as Elephant in some time.  I basically stated the obvious above but I had to say something....

I also wanted to address the issues people have with Van Sant's supposed cowardice in approaching this film.  What more do you want from the film?  And how much braver and ambitious can you be than trusting your audience the way Van Sant does with his film?  Truth be told and I know all of you agree, people are dumb.  Van Sant easily could've made a much more violent, visceral film that preaches at the end and "opens peoples' eyes" like Bowling for Columbine did.  I enjoyed Bowling and did find it provocative, but not nearly as effective as Elephant.  The film doesn't need to override your sense and mind and get you onto the same wavelength by means of manipulation as Michael Moore does (I'm being unfair to Bowling but I'm trying to make a point...).  There's a subtely and many softly spoken messages throughout the film but ultimately Gus Van Sant and the film's makers all surrender their work and vision to you, never once trying to hammer its point across through your brain.  For that I appreciate Elephant to the utmost; it not once told me how to feel or what to think, but instead is objectively and powerful observational and deeply compassionate and humane, as it is brutal and unflinching.  

I'll hail Elephant as a masterpiece till the day I die.



let the mud-slinging begin...  

[godardian]

About the kiss, I personally think it was to emphasize how alienated the two boys have become.  At that moment before the shooting, the kiss -- to me at least -- shows how they were all that mattered to each other.

Then again all the other theories I've heard and read are all true too (though I personally think the homosexuality route is too easy).  

let the mud-slinging begin...  

The homosexuality route is almost always too easy when it comes to movies and TV... I mean, who's to say they're not attracted to girls... AND each other? Our culture (the "straight" parts and the "gay" parts) is simpleminded and hypocritical about the fluidity and complexity of sexuality, so I approve of anything that refuses to be divided into neat categories. I was just saying that the post I was responding to was so unnecessarily emphatic in its unequivocal refutation of any sexual component to the kiss, it was almost like, "Thou doth protest too much."

No mud here. I'd like to see more posts like yours.

[Finn]

Ebert gave "Elephant" 4 stars!

ELEPHANT / * * * *

By Roger Ebert

Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" is a record of a day at a high school like Columbine, on the day of a massacre much like the one that left 13 dead. It offers no explanation for the tragedy, no insights into the psyches of the killers, no theories about teenagers or society or guns or psychopathic behavior. It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on.

Van Sant seems to believe there are no reasons for Columbine and no remedies to prevent senseless violence from happening again. Many viewers will leave this film as unsatisfied and angry as Variety's Todd McCarthy, who wrote after it won the Golden Palm at Cannes 2003 that it was "pointless at best and irresponsible at worst." I think its responsibility comes precisely in its refusal to provide a point.

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

Van Sant's "Elephant" is a violent movie in the sense that many innocent people are shot dead. But it isn't violent in the way it presents those deaths. There is no pumped-up style, no lingering, no release, no climax. Just implacable, poker-faced, flat, uninflected death. Truffaut said it was hard to make an anti-war film because war was exciting even if you were against it. Van Sant has made an anti-violence film by draining violence of energy, purpose, glamor, reward and social context. It just happens. I doubt that "Elephant" will ever inspire anyone to copy what they see on the screen. Much more than the insipid message movies shown in social studies classes, it might inspire useful discussion and soul-searching among high school students.

Van Sant simply follows a number of students and teachers as they arrive at the school and go about their daily routines. Some of them intersect with the killers, and many of those die. Others escape for no particular reason. The movie is told mostly in long tracking shots; by avoiding cuts between closeups and medium shots, Van Sant also avoids the film grammar that goes along with such cuts, and so his visual strategy doesn't load the dice or try to tell us anything. It simply watches.

At one point he follows a tall, confident African-American student in a very long tracking shot as he walks into the school and down the corridors, and all of our experience as filmgoers leads us to believe this action will have definitive consequences; the kid embodies all those movie heroes who walk into hostage situations and talk the bad guy out of his gun. But it doesn't happen like that, and Van Sant sidesteps all the conventional modes of movie behavior and simply shows us sad, sudden death without purpose.

*****

"I want the audience to make its own observations and draw its own conclusions," Van Sant told me at Cannes. "Who knows why those boys acted as they did?" He is honest enough to admit that he does not. Of course a movie about a tragedy that does not explain the tragedy -- that provides no personal of social "reasons" and offers no "solutions" -- is almost against the law in the American entertainment industry. When it comes to tragedy, Hollywood is in the catharsis business.

Van Sant would have found it difficult to find financing for any version of this story (Columbine isn't "commercial"), but to tell it on a small budget, without stars or a formula screenplay, is unthinkable. He found the freedom to make the film, he said, because of the success of his "Good Will Hunting," which gave him financial independence: "I came to realize since I had no need to make a lot of money, I should make films I find interesting, regardless of their outcome and audience."

[mutinyco]

Nice to know some people out there agree with me. After I saw it at the NYFF I wrote it was the best American film I'd seen all year. Yes, it is an art film gem. Like a cleansing hybrid between Kubrick's distance and Malick's naturalism.

[Ghostboy]

Samsong's post up there is pretty swell, in all regards.

I thought the movie was brilliant, for all the reasons he mentioned. I also see a certain potential for finding it flawed, for the reasons Cowboy Kurtis illuminated -- the massacre could have been handled differently, and it may have been more effective. There was a very definite dread that built throughout the film as we saw the students go about their routines, caused simply by our knowledge of what was going to happen. But then it wouldn't have been the movie Van Sant wanted to make, and which he succeeded in making, which was a purely objective, almost (but not quite) arbitrary look at the tragedy.

One of his best moves was in not showing the chief assasin do away with himself. There would be some vindication for the audience if we got to see that, which WOULD be cheap. The film left me in a state of flux. For a second after leaving it, while walking to my car, I thought I was about to either burst into tears or puke.

The photography was stunning -- the shallow focus work was just amazing, and the 1:33:1 aspect ratio really helped add to the power of the visuals. As soon as I realized it was being projected that way, I moved to the very front row (which I highly recommend doing, if you haven't seen it yet, or if you're planning on seeing it again).

Nick said the characters weren't interesting to him, but I loved them. They were completely real and familiar to me. Especially the photographer fellow, who is just like a friend of mine. The three bulemic girls were wonderful too -- the way they went from being best friends to having a divisive arugment to being friends again within about three mintues was really great character work.

Did anyone notice the nod to 'Gerry?' It was pretty hilarious. Speaking of which, this is a wonderful companion piece to that one. Van Sant has made two of my favorite films this year.

[godardian]

I'm putting this up on my stream-of-cultural-consciousness blog, but I thought I'd dupe it in this thread:

"It goes without saying that it's better than Finding Forrester, of course (I'm ashamed to admit I've not yet seen Gerry). It's a small film, and I mean that in the best sense of the word: It deals perceptively with the minutae, capturing the meandering fabric of everyday life, in addition to what Hannah Arendt called the 'banality of evil' (in the form of a Columbine-like shooting spree), which is the part of the film sure to be given the most attention. The camera work is beautiful, and it would be impossible to tell that the actors are non-professionals if that fact wasn't being announced from every street corner.

Up until the ending, it's just a point-by-point mapping of a day in the life of a high school, with its regular (suffering, each in their own way) kids trying to figure out who they are and going through some of the pain and some of the joy of that. It's the idea of this- the dignity of humanity, the petty but huge miseries of adolescence, the struggle to find an identity or cope with your disappointing family or be embarrassed about your pubescent body- being taken away that's truly devastating.

There's a metaphysical aspect to it all which, from the most superficial social-criticism point of judgment, might even seem inappropriate. There is no comfort here for anyone who's had events like the ones depicted rip a gash in their lives; there are no solutions on hand, only acute observation, and the film does exemplify what observational cinema can be at its finest.

Van Sant never tips his hand; there is no melodramatic bullying, no exaggerated poetic-license crystallization of teenage pain. We're left to decide for ourselves what might cause the kind of cold-bloodedviolence depicted, and to contemplate the vast and imperceptible sway of everyday, mundane life, which is something we don't usually feel the need to question... at least not until violence breaks its placid surface."

[pete]

just came back from it.  the cinematography was beautiful.  the movie itself was gleefully ignorant, indulgent, and exploitative.

it was gleefully ignorant because, as the filmmakers said so many times in so many interviews in prestigious film journals, it does not offer any "answer" to a high school shooting.  It does not because the filmmakers didn't know the answers, and many critics started contending that nobody knew the answers, therefore Elephant was a great film because any answer would've done it injustice.  So instead the filmmakers decided to do the next best thing it seemed: nothing.
that's right, it was like Fred Wiseman's documentary "High School" with guns.  The difference is that Wiseman's directed a documentary.  He had real insights (not offered by himself, but by his subjects, which was organized by himself as the editor) into an actual high school.  It was one of the first American "direct cinema" pieces, it was an attempt to capture "truth."  Gus Van Sant had actors and fictional characters.

Which makes the film indulgent, because while a documentary of a REAL event, IF it strives real hard to stay unbiased, can afford to ask its viewers to "contemplate" on what was shown based on all the facts given--Elephant is imagined entirely by Van Sant and his improvising cast.  He really is just asking us to contemplate what he's thought up, written, choreographed, and edited, which HE CLAIMS to be fair and unbiased because the usual bag of cinematic tricks is not present for the cultural police within us to point out "hey, that's a shakesperian foreshadowing" or "hey, that's a leftist motif against homophobia!"

So essentially it's a film that says nothing and claims nothing with a spectacularly filmmed massacre in the end (but whoa, check it out, it's DIFFERENT--there's no blood squibs and the gunmen don't run slow motioned sideways with doves in the background!  This shit is ART yo!), which makes it, along with another recent fave Irreversible, an exploitation film.  It claims to be nothing, then asks the audience to contemplate on that supposed nothing, all the while building up tension via multiple POV (multiple POV?!  Like cubism?) and the payoff is a massacre shot with arthouse sensibilities.

But the film had to be this way.  It could only be ignorant because how can Gus Van Sant provide any insight into something he has no understanding of?  It had to be indulgent or how else can "nothing" last a feature film's length (or any length at all)?  And it HAD to be absolutely exploitative or otherwise how would it get funded in the first place and generate so much controversy/ publicity?

and I have no idea why the filmmakers were so afraid to contrive an emotional bond between the viewers and the characters, or to provide any understanding into the character's psyches.  it's not like a total lack of insight is the only way to stay "balanced" or "in perspective."  Look at two other controversial American films, Do the Right Thing and Dead Man Walking.  Both were fair in a way that characters and events were portrayed as multi-dimensional, lively, and very well laid-out.  In both films, the characters are displayed intimately, with their deepest joy and sorrow depicted on screen.  In Elephant, there are long and amazingly timed and choreographed tracking shots of familiar American high school archetypes, branded by how they look, and never fully realized.  this is not any type of avant-garde filmmaking, or some kind of breakthrough in film narrative; this is well-crafted laziness.

to its credit, Elephant does make the viewers think; people seem to be debating about not only the film, but columbine, once again.  But the debate, so far, sounds like the same exact debate brought up when everyone got his piece of the columbine info via Time Magazine and Newsweek.

Gus Van Sant's proved twice before already with Psycho In Color and Gerry that he can shoot whatever the hell he wants, and this whole Elephant success is only encouraging him.

[modage]

finally saw this tonite.  it just opened here in philadelpiha.  (you know, you'd think we'd atleast get a few cool table scraps or something being like 2 hours from nyc, but apparently not.  this city blows).  i was looking forward to this movie a long time ago when i saw the trailer, which i found very haunting and really intriguing.  some things i liked about the movie...

-i liked that it just showed you what happens without trying to dramatize it.  had they tried to give you all the answers, it would've been very made-for-tv movie-ish. and i kept thinking during the film how that could have made it very terrible by trying to wrap everything up with a motive.  
-i liked how real the characters were. and how it really didnt seem like actors or any scripted fake hollywood movie.  it really felt really real. like, i graduated from hs 4 years ago, but watching this made me feel just like i was back there again.  the real faces and kids and i dunno, just everything was very accurate i thought to the way high school is.  not a dramatization making everything really unrealistic.

i didnt remember whether or not they showed the shooting, so most of hte movie i was thinking they werent going to show anything.  but then, that i would be disappointed with all the buildup.  i thought that some of the long behind the actor shots went on for a little too long, and the sweeping pan around the faces of the classroom was a little too much for me.  i didnt love this movie, but i still feel like everyone should see it.  it should be required viewing for freshmen in high school everywhere.  this, and the columbine sequence in bowling for columbine.  the ending was pretty horrifying.  it did give you a sense that you were there.  and it was senseless and random and horrible.  it wasnt a landmark for film or anything, but a pretty interesting re-telling of true events nonetheless.  i dont know that its something i want to watch again, or that it would work as well on dvd.  i think it would seem really slow if you werent in the theatre for a lot of those tracking shots, like 'shouldnt something be happening?', but being in the theatre, ill admit i wasnt bored.  but on dvd, i might be.

B-

[RegularKarate]

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.