I just finished watching the new HBO movie “Elephant”. I thought it deserved praise for the effective way it gave you the feel of being back in high school. They did a a good job of letting you know all about the setting before the shooting started. At first I just assumed that the movie was based directly on Columbine but by the end I wasn’t so sure. Anyone know the answer to this?
Gus Van Sant’s flick? Well, first off, it’s not really a new movie. Secondly, it was based on the Columbine shootings, yes, but more focused on the realities leading up to all that death and destruction. The concept was to reach into the heads of all the students, try to view the tragedy from every angle. Indeed, every scene (if I remember correctly) was filmed in real time with the others so that it gave the feel of an entire school alive, rather than simply chunk by chunk.
First, it’s not new. Released in 2003. While it is an “HBO film”, it was released theatrically and is now being aired on HBO.
Yes, Columbine inspired it but there are several key differences.
A link. Note: “Winner of the Palme d’Or and Best Director prizes at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival…” I.e., a great film that has been seen by fewer than 1% viewers than the “not screened for critics” The Fog.
I saw it last night, and thought it was terrible. I turned to Hubby and intoned Homer’s wise words: “Less artsy, more fartsy!”
Yes, I get it! The two-minute-long shot of storm clouds gathering. No need to bludgeon me with symbolism. The loooooooong pan shots which really told you nothing about the characters, just the rooms in which they sat . . . the pointless filming of a girl as she trotted down the hall. I understand the point the director was making with each of these, but they seemed extremely overlong and tedious.
You can say all that again. I thought it was a stupid poorly made stupid waste of time. It was one of those movies that you just have to watch all of because you can’t believe it is really this bad. The interminable back of the head walking shots were …interminable. It told you nothing about any of the characters. Nothing about why they did what they did. There was no there, there.
The only thing I thought during the vast majority of this movie was “Don’t any of these high school kids have CLASS?” In my high school, I couldn’t walk around for two minutes during classtime without someone asking for a hallpass.
I saw when it came out and thought it was absolutely excellent. Everyone left the theatre feeling absolutely dreadful and nauseous, which was surprising as I was sure we’d been desensitized to this sort of thing from years of constant replaying of school shooting footage and horrid attempts to cash in on tragedy through splashy magazine covers and religious-themed books.
It occurred to me that van Sant accomplished the next-to-impossible: he made a movie about Columbine that wasn’t sexy or glamourous and that didn’t make the killers look like poor bullied victims or justified rebels.
How else could this movie have been made (I suppose some will say it shouldn’t have been made at all)? Consider the shoddy treatment school shootings have been given in TV series- making the violence look campy and inconsequential or bringing in a martyr or superhero at the last minute. Elephant did not offer answers or even meaning because we are still looking for them, and for that, IMO, it should be commended.