Elephant *** (2003, Elias McConnell, Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson) – Classic Movie Review 1373

Two neo-Nazi high-school boys (Alex Frost, Eric Deulen) watch some Hitler rally newsreels, listen to Beethoven, then get kitted up in military gear and run amuck with a vast arsenal of weapons at their fictional Watt High School, in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, killing staff and pupils alike.

This utterly dark and chilling 2003 alarm-ringer from writer-director Gus van Sant gives off a whole slew of mixed messages, just when everybody needs to be very clear. With the various teens’ lives intersecting through the school’s corridors and classrooms, this is a brio slice of film-making, brilliantly orchestrated and edited, and its intentions are impeccably honourable.

But that’s not enough when you’re tackling the 1999 Columbine High School massacre issue in fictionalised form. It is subtle and commendable that van Sant does not want to tell the audience what to think, and his thought-provoking film forces the viewers to make up their own minds.

But it also comes with dangers if van Sant fails to deliver conclusions and solutions in the way Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002) does. As the first high-profile movie to show a high school shooting since Columbine, the film is risky and controversial.

Nevertheless, the horrifying everyday banality of evil does emerge in a properly terrifying way from van Sant’s important and essential film. And Elephant was critically acclaimed and it won the Palme d’Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

The mysterious title refers to the phrase ‘elephant in the room’, the collective denial of some very obvious problem, and is a tribute to the 1989 BBC short film Elephant about a series of sectarian killings in Northern Ireland, directed by Alan Clarke.

Elephant is the second film in van Sant’s Death Trilogy –  including Gerry (2002) and Last Days (2005) – all based on actual events.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1373

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