Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" Examines the Tiny, or Tragic, Terrors Of High School

IndyWIRE ^ | 5/21/2003 | Peter Brunette

[Joe Brower]

Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" Examines the Tiny, or Tragic, Terrors Of High School
by Peter Brunette
IndyWIRE
5/21/2003

The first 45 minutes of Gus Van Sant's new film, "Elephant," is self-assured, formally adroit, and profoundly illuminating. Exploring the Littleton, Colo., school massacre of 1999, the film displays such a clear and sympathetic understanding of the banality and tiny terrors of ordinary high school life that the viewer is left wondering not why this tragedy ever happened, but why it hasn't happened more often. Van Sant is perhaps the gutsiest filmmaker working in American independent cinema today and consequently his filmography is jammed almost equally with disasters ("Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," "Psycho") and triumphs ("Drugstore Cowboy," "My Own Private Idaho," "To Die For"). The split between the good and the bad even continues among his more self-consciously commercial films ("Good Will Hunting" vs. "Finding Forrester"). This curious division is replicated within his latest film, whose literal-minded and unimaginative second half diminishes the sublimities of the first.

To cast the film, Van Sant interviewed a bunch of kids from various high schools in his hometown of Portland, Ore. It's unclear exactly what he was looking for, but the result of his talent search is a group of students that seem completely natural and genuine, yet who lack the awkwardness of most non-professional actors thrust suddenly before the camera. (Significantly, their first names in the film, for the most part, are the same as their names in real life). One of the girls is so geeky-looking that she couldn't possibly be anything but real, and she recalls the slovenly peasant girl from Rossellini's "Paisan" (1946). These kids are accompanied by smooth professionals -- like Timothy Bottoms -- who only enhance the feeling of authenticity. The opening scene, for example, gives us a drunken father (Bottoms) driving his son to school, and we're immediately and forcefully pulled into the film as he smashes into one car after another along the way.

Van Sant is also at the top of his filmmaking game in presenting these mostly forlorn lives, employing a kind of stylized realism that depends for a lot of its effectiveness on a relentlessly tracking camera that follows these kids everywhere, even into the bathroom. (Van Sant also sometimes reverse-rhymes the tracking shots by putting his camera, for example, at the other end of a huge gymnasium.) What's absolutely welcome here is that Van Sant has foregone the use of the hand-held camera, which a lesser director would have relied upon, in favor of the otherworldly smoothness of what seems to be a Steadicam.

Events are de-dramatized, and there's a casualness to everything that seems almost magical. Football practice is underlined, unusually and remarkably, by a classical music score. There are also tiny moments of slow motion that seem intended to increase the intensity of certain otherwise insignificant gestures. Most provocatively, the director employs a "Rashomon"-like chronological method in which a few structuring events are seen three different times, say, from the perspective of three different characters. In this, of course, he's following the practice of many recent films that seem obsessed by questions of time and their implications for cinematic form, but the film never feels derivative in the slightest way. And though all of this paraphernalia may sound like it weighs the film down, it does anything but.

Weirdly, the exact moment when the film begins to lose much of its aesthetic interest can be pinpointed. It comes when the three superficial girls he's been following, Brittany, Jordan, and Nicole, enter the ladies' room to purge, simultaneously, after lunch. The delicate balance between naturalism and stylization is lost, and with the latter momentarily taking over, our aesthetic investment in the film suddenly becomes threatened.

The film further deteriorates, ironically, when the action begins to pick up. As Van Sant becomes more aligned dramatically and narratively with the killers, our own interest becomes riveted in the unfolding events. But what we see, with few exceptions, seems to follow the by-now familiar pathway: Nazi websites, gun ordering on the Internet, violent video games, frustrated artistic creativity (one of the killers is fond of playing Beethoven) and so on. Maybe the problem is that Van Sant's desire to employ some narrative shorthand has a lot of these emblematic moments occurring within the same scene, and thus they seem forced and obvious. Happily, this final section is redeemed by some signature Van Sant moments (wish-fulfillments?) such as the killers kissing in the shower before they embark on their deadly task. Unfortunately, before tackling the greatest mystery of all -- just how could someone do this? -- Van Sant falters slightly and what could have been a masterpiece becomes just another pretty good movie.

[Joe Brower]

Oh, goody. Another anti-gun propaganda film, due to be out around November. Just what we need, with the 1994 "Assault Weapons Ban" due for sunset a year from now. Coincidence? No way. And you think that this "film" will depict how the brave sheriff "resource officer" at the school ran away when he came under fire? Or how the heroic SWAT troopies waited outside for THREE HOURS while the killing inside proceeded? They even sent out for pizza while they waited! Again, not a chance.

In this month's (August) "America's First Freedom" NRA magazine, Wayne LaPierre's column mentions this upcoming smear-flick, which I had not heard of until now. I could not find the particular article he describes, "Van Sant hits bullseye with gun film" in the Toronto Star anywhere on the web, but a google search using "elephant van sant" yielded several results, one of which is the article above.

Here are links to a couple of other articles on this upcoming "masterpiece":

Elephant

Gus Van Sant takes on school violence in new film

Hey, who knows? Maybe this will inspire even more worthless punks to do that copycat thing, giving the blood-dancers even more grist for the mill.

[Joe Brower]

MWLWN LABE

[Support Free Republic]

See that good looking dude on the left? He's got FAR BETTER THINGS to do than conduct Freepathons! Come on, let's get this thing over with.

[secretagent]

Can't tell from the review - perhaps Van Sant will recruit more parents to home schooling!

[Jhensy]

To cast the film, Van Sant interviewed a bunch of kids from various high schools in his hometown of Portland, Ore. It's unclear exactly what he was looking for...

Oh, I'm sure ol' Gus ("My Own Private Idaho") knew exactly what he was looking for...research was surely very extensive involving teenage boys and casting couches....

... a stylized realism that depends for a lot of its effectiveness on a relentlessly tracking camera that follows these kids everywhere, even into the bathroom.

Huh. Who'd a thunk it.

Happily, this final section is redeemed by some signature Van Sant moments (wish-fulfillments?) such as the killers kissing in the shower

Hooray for Hollywood.

[Eaker]

And people believe this crap.

Eaker

[spodefly]

The left is getting great mileage by dancing on the graves of the victims of school shootings. Nowhere in any of their "investigations" do they consider Ritalin, bad parents, a failed Ed system, a permissive me me me culture ... nope ... it's the evil guns (period) that cause all the problems.

[Travis McGee]

All the more reason to do a little counter-propagandizing.

Besides my book, I understand there is a book called "Molon Labe" also being written, possibly by Boston T. Party, author of "The Gun Bible."

Support these books, give them as gifts, send them to opinion makers (columnists, editors etc) in the undecided middle of America.

[PatrioticAmerican]

I live just down the street from Columbine. The residents HATE the cops for their cowardice. As one lady put it, "If SOMEONE would have been shooting back, maybe not all those poor people would have died! Of course, our Sheriff doesn't want US to have the guns, just his Coward Cops." This was a 76 year old lady who had lived in Colorado her whole life.

I actually think that Columbine is what helped get the CWP passed in Colorado.

[Blood of Tyrants]

If this is a masterpiece, then I just flushed a priceless treasure down the toilet. Oh, the humanity!

[Joe Brower]

[PhilDragoo]

ELEPHANT

Okay, so Gus is a homosexual who's made a real blockbuster about two Ritalin punks backing down the local sheriff and SWAT team and doing a dozen teens.

The message here is stay armed and home school.

[punster]

I don't think you should call Michael Moore an elephant.

It is insulting.

Yes, it is insulting to elephants. :-)

[Restorer]

And you think that this "film" will depict how the brave sheriff "resource officer" at the school ran away when he came under fire? Or how the heroic SWAT troopies waited outside for THREE HOURS while the killing inside proceeded?

You have a decent point here.

However, it is flawed by your blaming the cops who were only following their tactical doctrine. Just like the people who blame the security personnel who allowed the 911 hijackers to board.

In both cases, the problem was not with the personnel who did their jobs as they were told. It is with the instructions they were given. Those instructions were based on faulty assumptions about the perpetrators.

In the Columbine case, the assumption was that the intruders would take hostages and negotiate, rather than just kill as many people as they could. Based on experience up to that point, this was a logical assumption.

If the deputy on guard had returned fire and gunned down one or both students, there would have been an enormous outcry about the police killing "students," since the enormity of what they were going to do would have been unknown.

Similarly, the passengers on the first three 911 planes did exactly what the media and government had told us to do for years: don't resist. You'll fly around for a few days and then be released. Maybe you'll get to write a book about the experience or sell movie rights.

Once the intent of the hijackers was known, on the third plane it apparently took the passengers only a few minutes to organize a counterattack. That's what we should remember and be proud of. It took the hijackers many years to plan and execute their attack. It took a couple dozen random Americans less than 15 minutes to counterattack successfully.

Had the rank and file police known what was happening inside Columbine, I have no doubt they would have been glad to charge in. Blame the media and liberal culture for paralyzing their instincts, not the individual cops.

Both of these events change the way we all see the world. Don't blame those who didn't see it differently before they happened. We didn't either.

[Joe Brower]

I see what you are saying. I must point out that police officers operate under the potential risks of injuring or killing innocents in every armed engagement they encounter. And this does happen, and the cops almost to a man end up completely exonerated.

If tactical doctrine was responsible for their paralysis, then that doctrine needs to be modified to allow more on-the-ground on-the-spot command decisions. There is far too much emphasis nowadays on "protect your own skin and never mind the little people". This is certainly not applicable to all, but common enough to pose a large problem. That's the primary reason I left the military and would not make a good cop -- I "think for myself" too much, and will disregard orders when I see fit, such as if I'm ordered to stay outside while hearing gunfire and screams issuing from inside the building. Media and CYA-police-cheif's claims to the contrary, this was the case as I have understood it.

"A man's got to know his limitations", as the saying goes. I know mine, and that's why I've deliberately avoided having my actions in such circumstances be dictated by armchair bureaucrats. Individual mileage, as they say, will vary.

Stay safe,