Gus Van Sant's 'Elephant' alludes to Columbine violence

CANNES, France (AP) - It starts out as a normal day at a typical American high school. Friends gossip in the cafeteria. A young photographer snaps portraits for his portfolio. A shy girl endures taunts from classmates in the locker room.

But at the end of "Elephant," Gus Van Sant's new film at the Cannes Film Festival, two students go on a shooting rampage in the hallways. And many die.

The "Good Will Hunting" director's movie, a fictional account of a school shooting, takes an intimate look at a few hours in the lives of the victims and the killers.

It's a very different take on school violence than Michael Moore offered in "Bowling for Columbine," a hit at Cannes last year. Moore's film searched for the roots of violence in America by looking at everything from school shootings to racism to the National Rifle Association.

Van Sant doesn't offer any reasons for why school violence happens. The message is about how precious teenage lives are: He picked real high school students to act, and he captured their passions, insecurities, awkwardness and beauty.

"We tried to not really specifically explain such a ... horrific event," Van Sant said Sunday. "I was really trying to get out more a poetic impression and sort of allow the audiences' thoughts into that impression."

Van Sant had initially hoped to make a documentary for network television about the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. He said executives were worried about showing the violence on television.

HBO Films signed on for a fictional story based on reality. In Cannes, the team is looking for a U.S. distributor to show the movie in theaters before it airs on HBO.

For Van Sant, the film harks back to the small, lower-budget movies he once made, like "My Own Private Idaho." In Portland, Ore., Van Sant found a decommissioned school for filming and held an open casting call.

The movie was shot in 20 days. There were no scripted lines, and the students improvised their dialogue, with Van Sant asking them to base their characters on their own lives.

The movie's title is a reference to a 1989 BBC movie, also called "Elephant," about political violence in Northern Ireland. Both films show a difficult problem that's as easy to ignore as an elephant in the living room.

With long tracking shots, the movie shadows several students who are targeted later. One confident, athletic boy flirts with his girlfriend in the hallway. A shy girl shelves books at the library.

It also follows the two boys who eventually carry out the shooting spree. In many ways, they act like ordinary kids. They joke around with one boy's mother as she serves them pancakes. One plays Beethoven's "Fur Elise" on the piano while they hang out.

There are hints of the anger they feel. One of the boys is bullied by a student who throws spitballs at him. The other plays a violent video game. But the director's touch is light: Van Sant isn't blaming their massacre on either bullying or violent video games. Instead, he offers issues to think about.

While the movie is fiction, some details were based on the Columbine massacre, when gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and then turned their guns on themselves.

In one scene, one of the young killers walks into the evacuated school cafeteria and pauses to sip from someone's glass - an image recorded by Columbine's surveillance cameras. (Published 9:11AM, May 19th, 2003)

It is going to be interesting to see just how van Sant deals with second amendment issues in Elephant.

I've seen it suggested here on FR that demonification of guns has something to do with school shootings; also that extreme political correctness has had something to do with it. Could curriculum and policy that encourage victim psychology also be a contributor? Surely TV violence has and will be a factor. It would seem that van Sant's film deals with teenage isolation and angst, in any case. One could say that all generations have experienced that in one way or another. It's just that American students have increasingly turned to murderous application of firearms as a means for expressing their frustrations. In any case, van Sant's film appears to be far less single-minded as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.

The title pays homage to Alan Clarke's Elephant made in 1989. One reviewer describes it as follows:

Perhaps the most provocative film ever made about Northern Ireland's 'Troubles', Elephant is simply a sequence of shootings, filmed remorselessly and without dialogue by a roving Steadicam. Made in Belfast, co-conceived and produced by Danny Boyle, it is a brutally sparse evocation of the 'cycle of violence'.

A BBC promotional still for the earlier Elephant, and a pic of Clarke presumably are here:

Needless to say, the left in this country continues to ignore the fragility of democracy when it addresses the notion of firearms in any capacity. When the American Constitution is only a historical document, and our republic is no more, the deaths of a few highschool students may not seem as significant as the passing of this great nation. Given the speculation on FR that the vilification of guns in and of itself can make for increased gun violence, it wouldn't surprise me if the banning of guns leads to the demise of the republic as well.

Memorial day has come and gone. History repeats itself: wars happen again and again. Yet the American left (taking its cue from academia) repeatedly tries to find any way it can to objectify and categorize war and violence into a sort of twisted pathology that puts the attacker and the victim on a footing of equal complicity. While that approach wouldn't apply to the academic view of school violence, shooting under any circumstances is an anathema to the left, and in attempting to sweep all use of firearms in anger aside as an avoidable disease, they may be encouraging youthful killers to take the action most likely to gain national attention. A link exists between pacifism and extreme abhorence for all gun violence. Yet without war, our nation wouldn't exist. Without war, slavery would still be legal in this country. Without war, change for the better might never happen. Can a political movement that would never tolerate warfare be trusted to determine the meaning of the second amendment?

Gus van Sant has promised that this film will not be "anti-American." I can't speculate on his recent political viewpoints. But freedom to bear weapons suitible for warfare is essential to the security of this nation from both internal and external enemies. Can van Sant speak about school violence, winning a French award, and avoid anti-gun propaganda? For those of us who haven't seen the film yet, that remains to be seen.

I learned, while in the fifth grade, that violence has its place and can solve problems. I was troubled by bullys. One day, I stayed late at school because of a singing program (I like to sing even though I cannot carry a note in a bucket). Walking home, I was followed by three punk kids, taunting me and one in particular striking me across the back and shoulders while we walked. At one point when I could take no more, I threw my books to the ground and turned on my tormentors. I still remember it vividly. The other two broke and ran, while the third one, the guy doing the hitting, wanted to run across the street. He could not because of traffic and I grabbed him, slamming him against the wall. I did not hit him but instead talked to him. I told him I did not like being hit and that if he continued in the future, I would hurt him. I remember to this day the fright in his eyes and how good it made me feel to see that. He and his buddies never bothered me again. During the years, similar incidents occurred with similar results.

I've learned over the years, that violent situations for the most part call for violent solutions. What it ironic that the liberals never acknowledge is that when some nutcase goes on a rampage, the people called in to handle the nutcase are usually police, who will finish the job started with guns, with guns.

It is going to be interesting to see just how van Sant deals with second amendment issues in Elephant.

If it is celebrated at Cannes it will be a covert, if not overt attack on Self Reliant, Independent American Values.

Remember the great ability of the left to convert phrases "with which everyone agrees" into concepts with completely opposite sinister meanings.

Many (most) movie makers do the same thing with a visual lexicon.

Study it carefully, what you think you see may not be what it really "means". Best regards,

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