Elephant (2003)
"We didn't want to explain anything.
As soon as you explain one thing, there are five other
possibilities that are somehow negated... There is
also the issue of finding an explanation for something
that doesn't necessarily have an explanation..." -
Gus Van Sant
Note: Some spoilers, I guess.
Like "Zero Hour," Gus Van Sant's
"Elephant" is a "Columbine" film. And like "Zero Hour,"
"Elephant" falls victim to the same poor choice of
finale. Both of these films (although "Elephant" is
vastly different from and vastly superior to "Zero
Hour") insist on focusing on the finale bloody, revolting
and depressing climax to the story, where two boys
go into a school and shoot everyone in sight. Like
popular culture, mass media and much of the psychological
community, these films seem to focus too much on the
final product of what has happened here, instead of
presenting the true question: What in the world led
us here?
Van Sant creates a beautiful picture
for over an hour, nonetheless. Here, instead of concentrating
on the perpetrators of the climactic crime, he spends
much time focusing on the eventual victims. We get
to meet several of those about to be cut down, and
a few that will survive. But Van Sant presents these
characters in an odd way, building tension, yet never
really allowing us to know anything about the characters.
In many ways, we are only allowed to glimpse into
the tragedy. We are only allowed to see what's on
the surface.
"Elephant" takes place in a high
school, uses real high school students as actors,
and "feels" like high school. Van Sant captures the
maze-like, nondescript numbness that is modern American
high schools. He follows his characters endlessly
as they dully traverse the florescent bulb-lit labyrinth
that is the centerpiece of their lackluster existence.
By the time his climactic acts of violence occur,
we are ready for something - anything - to take us
away from this weekday drudgery. By the time the first
rifle is fired, we are practically begging for a bullet
in the head, such is the mind-numbing disinterest
of the existence we have been forced to endure for
80 minutes. This is Van Sant's final joke in the film:
Two people beg not to be killed and we ask ourselves
why anyone would cling onto this drudgery, this dull-as-dishwater
existence. In Van Sant's Columbine, the perpetrators
seem to kill as much out of boredom as they do frustration
and anger.
In a film about boredom, it is only
natural that Van Sant would play with time, much like
he did in last year's phenomenal "Gerry." Here, he
goes over and over the final minutes in the lives
of many of his characters to the point of near comatose
disinterest. We go inside the school here and watch,
over and over, a single unimportant incident which
comes before the climactic moments of the film. But,
oddly, we see it though several different points of
view, through the points of view of the different
characters involved.
Van Sant is wise. Not only does
this remind us of his theme of drudgery but also builds
the arrival of the climax to an unquestionable height
of tension by this repetition. Not simply because
we know what the eventual climax of the film will
be but because of the oddity of seeing such inconsequential
moments several times over amazingly intensifies every
nuance of the film. Van Sant, in effect, stops time
by repeating the moment over and over until we are
stuck within it. "Matrix"-like, we are allowed to
stop a moment, in a way, and witness it over and over
from several different angles. It is a unique experience.
Van Sant also plays with time by
adjusting the pitch of the film's speed in beautiful,
cool and new ways. Life speeds along in real time
for a while and then, suddenly, amazingly, seamlessly,
it slows for a moment, and the importance of a single,
seemingly meaningless moment, is petrified in time,
crystalizing it and again allowing us to focus on
it in amazement. This is a devastating technique,
one that is breathtaking and awe-inspiring.
Van Sant may concentrate on the
victims but he also looks at the killers here as well
in another amazing and crystalized moment. This most
important sequence is an extended and again tension-filled
moment, done in a single shot, as is most of the film.
Here, we see our antagonists as protagonists, as one
tries to play a beautiful Beethoven piece on piano.
The effect is one which causes us to question our
very notion of these characters until the meditation
ends in a crescendo of frustration. It is a poignant
moment, one steeped in innocence and reality and yet
one that is very troublesome in light of our knowledge
of the eventual action of the characters.
Much has been made about the second,
intimate glimpse of the killers, one in which they
kiss, naked in the shower. Van Sant has defended this
scene by saying that he is not indicating that the
characters are "gay." Anyone with half an ounce of
brain matter would realize that this is so. Van Sant
has one of these characters begin the scene by saying,
"I've never even kissed anyone." Then the two boys,
seen from a distance, fake an intimate kiss as the
camera holds upon them. While certainly not daring,
nor prurient, the kiss is nonetheless very important.
Van Sant is suggesting an element of sexuality (in
this particular case homosexuality) but this is not
done so much to suggest their sexual identity as it
is to suggest their lack of ANY identity. The boys
(and they are boys) have experienced nothing. They
have taken all the negative things that have happened
in their lives (including boredom) and perverted them
into anger, bitterness and resentment. And they have
buried this so deeply within their psyches that even
they themselves cannot see this within themselves.
It's no surprise then, that no one else sees it either.
The kiss represents much. Lack of
experience as well as innocence, societal pressure,
peer pressure, brotherhood, unity... and probably
a hundred other things. The kiss is important because
it brings forth a thousand different ideas in a single
moment. This is merely a reflection of Van Sant's
tactic here. In other scenes, we see the same moment,
with a single unimportant meaning, played out over
and over, concentrating on the inconsequential making
it seem important. Here, we have a single moment,
massively important, played out once, and from a distance,
seemingly almost from around the corner, through the
haze of a hot shower, in a way that it seems shallow
and unimportant. Van Sant is asking us where we are.
He is questioning us, as a society, by asking us to
consider what is important here, what we focus upon.
He is telling us, in his own unique way, that what
we focus on is inconsequential - and what we nearly
miss is full of layered and deep meaning that we only
see the surface of. It is a devastating moment in
the film.
While homosexuality is an issue
in the film, it is so because it was in the true Columbine
situation as well. It is only natural that Van Sant,
an openly gay man, would choose to expose and question
this issue of the situation in his film. The young
men who killed people at Columbine had been, or so
it was reported, taunted and debased with insults
from peers regarding their sexuality. This, it is
said, is partially what may have lead to their anger
and frustration. And, as gay men understand, perhaps
in a greater way than the general public, sexual confusion
and frustration can be an enormous burden during your
adolescent years. Van Sant confronts these question
with the kiss in the shower as well as in an earlier
scene where a classroom discusses if it is possible
to identify a gay person just by the way they look.
Questions of sexual identity as well as personal identity
are exactly what Columbine is about and what Van Sant
exposes "Elephant" to be about as well.
Van Sant has teenagers seemingly
play themselves here. (Most of them use their own
real first names as their character's name here).
His main character, if one can suggest that there
is one here, is John (John Robinson), a beautiful
and typical looking teenage boy whose appearance in
the film ultimately leads to a surprise of sorts.
When John is first introduced, his problematic situations
with a parent suggest to us that he will become one
of the killers. This evolves into a twist where John
becomes not only a hero of sorts but also a character
that again forces us to ask questions about the event,
in particular: If John's life is as messed up as it
is, why doesn't he turn to rebellious mayhem as his
peers do? Van Sant has no answer but the asking of
the question, to a certain degree, begins to point
to the problem and, hopefully, ultimately a clearer
understanding of the issues at play here.
Elias (Elias McConnell) seems to
be Van Sant's alter-ego. Fans of the director know
that he is a highly acclaimed photographer as well
as a filmmaker and this teen character in the film
seems to be a reflection of the director. It is important
that he clicks a photo of the killers directly before
the mayhem starts. Like Van Sant, he captures a crystalline
moment in time on film.
Meanwhile, all the females in the
film, with one exception, seem to be caricatures of
popular high school girls. Van Sant even resorts to
a cheap joke, exposing the three bitchiest girls in
the film as vomiting Anorexics. Interestingly and
importantly, the first person to die at the hands
of the killers is Michelle (Kristen Hicks), an awkward
and nerdy teenage girl who, as we have been shown,
perhaps experiences as much negative pressure from
peers and for teachers and administrators as the killers
themselves apparently have. (Again, begging the question,
why does she not rebel violently?)
Yes, sadly, Van Sant insists on
going inside the school for the murders at the film's
end. This is unnecessary. We know how the story ends.
To spend any time focusing on the murders here is
simply exploitation. Still, while Van Sant explodes
a few squibs here and does spend some time showing
us the mayhem, he does not really treat the climax
of the film in an exploitative manner (unlike "Zero
Day"). His images, at least, seem to ask us to consider
the victims and not the killers. His story methods,
in allowing some to live, and introducing new characters
only for them to be killed, allows us to consider
the meaninglessness, pointlessness and inequity of
the murders. While characters we like as well as dislike
are killed, others escape. Also, others that we have
not even really been introduced to at all are killed.
Van Sant seems to suggest that even he, as the filmmaker
and the storyteller, has little control over who becomes
a victim. Such is the meaninglessness and the unfairness
of the killers' actions.
Why is the film called "Elephant"
when we do not see a literal elephant in the film
except on the wall in a small drawing? Van Sant is
berating us for missing the obvious. These boys, the
killers - their confusion, their anger, their bitterness,
their problems - they are as big and as obvious as
an elephant. Even with their vastness, Van Sant wonders
if we truly saw them. Or if we ever will.
Notes:
The film premiered at Cannes where
it won the Golden Palm, a French education award and
Van Sant was named Best Director.
Filmed in Portland, Oregon, Van
Sant's home town.
Viewed at the Arbor in Austin in
November 2003.
