Elephant

As an elegy to the Columbine High School massacre, this is a perfect film. It's also an opportunity for director Gus Van Sant to think outside the box, a box he chafes at as much as Robert Altman (to name another Hollywood outsider). Your typical day at school -- going to classes, saying hi to your friends in the halls, wondering how you fit in the social hierarchy. Except that, of course, this isn't just another day. You don't see the killers until nearly halfway through the film, and it's at this point that the film is at its best. Van Sant follows particular kids through their day. At times they intersect each other's paths, so you start to get an idea of where they are in relation to each other. Once you see the killers, the film becomes nearly unbearable to watch, as you don't know when the shooting will start, even as you know where all the pawns are. Unfortunately, once the massacre does begin, it takes on a surreal quality which didn't fit with my need to understand what really happened. I realize what Van Sant is doing here (see: outside the box), but hey, no screaming, no full-blown panic, no hall monitors?! It disengaged me, but this may be no fault of Van Sant's. Once the horror begins, you've naturally lost a lot of momentum. Most interesting is the glimpse into the lives of perfectly normal- looking kids going about their plans to destroy their school. (I believe the real Columbine kids were not so obviously normal looking.) Kudos to the children who played the roles. As excellent amateurs, they made it more real than Van Sant could have hoped for.

year: 2003
length: 81 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/combined