|
ELEPHANT
10/10
USA
2003 : Gus VAN SANT : 81 mins
Elephant
has polarised opinions since it premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film
Festival, where the jury unexpectedly awarded it the Palme d’Or and Variety’s
chief reviewer Todd McCarthy slammed it as “pointless at best and
irresponsible at worst.” Such extreme reactions are inevitable to such
an extreme treatment of such an extreme subject: the April 1999 massacre
at Ohio’s Columbine High School, when two pupils armed with assault weapons
killed 13 and wounded 21.
Van Sant has
been accused of either avoiding proper exploration of the killings’ causes,
or of providing over-simplistic explanations: the bullied, maybe-gay killers
(dweeby Alex Frost, pointedly Eminem-ish Eric Deulen) watch a TV documentary
on Nazism; play a shoot-em-up computer-game (based, amusingly, on Van
Sant’s own Gerry); order
weapons from the internet with alarming ease; are ignored by their parents.
The film has also been savagely
criticised for being “wholly dedicated to the creation of blissful
innocents, whose impending slaughter we await with mounting dread.”
These views
aren’t “right” or “wrong”: like any real work of art, Elephant
is sufficiently rich that it lays itself open to all kinds of subjective
analysis, reaction and interpretation (which Van Sant constantly and knowingly
invites). Although Columbine is clearly the starting point, it seems that
a much wider malaise in American (and perhaps even human) society is being
diagnosed and illustrated over the course of these 81 tantalising minutes.
It’s pretty clear that, even before Alex and Eric’s murderous spree, the
school is already riddled with dysfunction, from the trio of bulimic teen
queens throwing up in the toilets, to the hyper-sensitive Michelle (Kristen
Hicks), who has ‘body issues’ of a different kind..
The casting
of Timothy Bottoms – one of only two professional actors in an ensemble
otherwise comprised of real-life high-school students (who improvised
most of the script) – as a drink-driving dad would seem, meanwhile, to
point an oblique but damning finger at the present occupant of the White
House. Bottoms, virtually unrecognisable from the fresh-faced youth of
The Last Picture Show,
is now best known for playing (one-time drink-driver) George W Bush on
the short-lived satirical TV show That’s My Bush. Or is this casting-coup
just one more coy provocation from the evasive Van Sant?
 Regardless
of its deeper meaning(s) (or lack of), the film’s technique is radical,
innovative and breathtaking. Cinematographer Harris Savides (who also
shot The Game) crafts
audaciously long Steadicam shots which follow students around a school
building that’s already been widely compared with Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel
from The Shining, brilliantly
complemented by Leslie Shatz’s haunting sound design. Nimbly gliding back
and forth across the time-frame over a single day – and only occasionally
bogging down into Gerry-esque gratuitous longueurs - the film patiently
builds an hour of Altmanesque, quotidian/hallucinatory intensity... which
then suddenly kicks into a remorselessly linear, blood-spattered nightmare
as the killings begin.
The results
are compelling, challenging, thought-provoking, beautiful, repellent,
transcendent, shattering... Admire it or despise it, but after Elephant
everything else you’ll see on a cinema screen this year may seem very
flimsy stuff indeed.
23rd
February, 2004
(seen
22nd February : Tyneside
Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. First seen 16th February,
same place)
For other
films rated 9/10 and 10/10 check out our Hall
of Fame.
by Neil
Young
-
|
