list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Elephant on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Elephant/226318/default.aspx Title: Elephant
Year: 2003
Director: Gus Van Sant
Plot: Director Gus Van Sant returned to the low-key style of his early independent efforts with this semi-improvised exploration of how violence makes its way into a typical American high school. Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) are two close friends who are students in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, OR. Eric and Alex are at once ordinary and misfits; while they seem to be confined to the edges of the clique-oriented social strata of high school, little about their behavior draws attention to itself. Or at least not during a typical school day; on their own time, the two boys are fascinated by Nazi iconography, enjoy violent video games, tentatively explore homoerotic desires, and coolly begin to make plans for an armed ambush of the school, drawing up working diagrams of the lunch room during study hall and buying rifles over the Internet. Drawing an expected degree of controversy, Elephant had its world premiere when it was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won both Best Director for Van Sant and the Golden Palm award. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 56
Number of Lists: 59
Number of blog posts: 6
Number of discussion threads: 4
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 26 May 2009 16:49:50 GMTElephant2003Gus Van SantDirector <a href="/players/P___115102/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Gus Van Sant</a> returned to the low-key style of his early independent efforts with this semi-improvised exploration of how violence makes its way into a typical American high school. Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) are two close friends who are students in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, OR. Eric and Alex are at once ordinary and misfits; while they seem to be confined to the edges of the clique-oriented social strata of high school, little about their behavior draws attention to itself. Or at least not during a typical school day; on their own time, the two boys are fascinated by Nazi iconography, enjoy violent video games, tentatively explore homoerotic desires, and coolly begin to make plans for an armed ambush of the school, drawing up working diagrams of the lunch room during study hall and buying rifles over the Internet. Drawing an expected degree of controversy, Elephant had its world premiere when it was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won both Best Director for Van Sant and the Golden Palm award. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide56Tag Target (>10)59643http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t41139mwiiv.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Elephant/226318/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/Movie_Polls/What_is_your_favorite_Palme_d_Or_winner_from_the_l/657/42409/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Movie Polls
Post Date: 5/26/2009 12:49:50 PM
Body: Please reference this thread for the rules of this group. Thanks to tadiv for suggesting this one. - "In recognition of the Cannes Film Festival, what is your favorite Palme d'Or film from the last 6 years?" Please vote only once in each poll. Movies referenced in this poll:4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)ElephantL'enfant (The Child)Entre les murs (The Class)Fahrenheit 9/11The Wind That Shakes the Barley
]]>Tue, 26 May 2009 16:49:50 GMTRisseladaMovie Polls5/26/2009 12:49:50 PMPlease reference this thread for the rules of this group. Thanks to tadiv for suggesting this one. - "In recognition of the Cannes Film Festival, what is your favorite Palme d'Or film from the last 6 years?" Please vote only once in each poll. Movies referenced in this poll:4 luni, 3 saptam&acirc;ni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)ElephantL'enfant (The Child)Entre les murs (The Class)Fahrenheit 9/11The Wind That Shakes the Barley http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/7/17/32662.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 7/17/2008 11:00:49 AM
Body: Every week or so you’ll hear about a video game being adapted for the big screen, especially with the gaming industry raking it in hand over fist these days. In the past year alone studios have touted the announcements of deals for game-based movies like World of Warcraft, Halo, and Metal Gear Solid. But what about the movies that already seem like video games? There are a fair share of flicks that feature everything from gimmicky camera styles to plotlines that seem like they were ripped right out of the latest console bestseller and plunked into multiplexes. Check out the list below and watch these video game movies that aren’t video game movies. 1. Elephant (2003): This Gus Van Sant film was inspired by the Columbine school shooters, who were in turn supposedly inspired by video games Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. The movie is made up of extremely long tracking shots, filmed just behind the character the story is currently following. By design, this makes the film look like a thirdperson game like Grand Theft Auto, except without all the hookers and drug-running. 2. Starship Troopers (1999): Invading aliens that look like bugs sounds like the plot of Ender’s Game, but the movie looks a whole lot like Halo. Grunt marines blowing things apart with shotguns, massive orbital ships that don’t do much else except explode in space and drop mission-important debris all over the place, and one badass soldier who survives through everything. Like Halo, this is also about to become a trilogy as Caspar Van Diem reprises his leading role. 3. Lady in the Lake (1947): Chalk this one up as a massive failure in cinematic innovation. Lady in the Lake was filmed entirely from the first person point of view of the main character, and you’d only occasionally see his hand lighting a cigarette, opening a door, etc. Before the Doom generation there was this Philip Marlowe vehicle with Robert Montgomery in the lead role, and it pretty much plunged off of a cliff while on fire. 4. Clash of the Titans (1981): Before games like Everquest and World of Warcraft sent dozens of digital denizens off on endless quests in search of trinkets, this was the roleplaying genre in movie form. Perseus had to head out in search of several magic items like a sword and a shield before he could could fight the Gods and let the end credits begin. They’re remaking this movie with a 2010 release date, and it had damn better well have Bubo the mechanical owl in it. 5. TRON (1982): While there have been other movies about video games, like Joysticks, The Wizard and The Last Starfighter, Tron was the first movie that was actually about the development of games, and featured a game designer getting zapped into the artificial world he’d helped create. It featured cutting-edge CGI graphics, and is still considered the pinnacle of gaming + movies. This movie also ushered in the TRON coin-op arcade game, which chewed millions of quarters from the pockets of kids eager to get digitized. Bonus Level: Movies with video game scenes in them, even though they aren’t video game movies. National Lampoon’s Vacation: Genre mixing video games as Russ tries to eat the Family Truckster with Pac-Man while Audrey zaps him with a spider. Poor Clark can’t even get a break when simply planning vacations. If you can name the home computer system that the Griswold’s used, then you’re either a high-level nerd, a Vacation-o-phile, or just living in the 80s. The Beach: Leonardo DiCaprio goes slightly nuts and hallucinates that he’s in a video game while waiting in the jungle in this Danny Boyle-directed movie. Too bad it wasn’t as good as the book, which actually didn’t even feature this video game scene. When the little one-off scene you film to show how crazy your main character is becoming end up being better than the entire movie, you’re in trouble. Crank: The opening credits for Crank tell the story of the movie in 8-bit graphics, along with cheesy techno music. Chev’s vitals have to stay about a certain level, or else he buys it. They’ll be reprising this in the credits for Crank 2, if you can stand to ride it all over again. Think about packing a tranquilizer. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:00:49 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com7/17/2008 11:00:49 AMEvery week or so you’ll hear about a video game being adapted for the big screen, especially with the gaming industry raking it in hand over fist these days. In the past year alone studios have touted the announcements of deals for game-based movies like World of Warcraft, Halo, and Metal Gear Solid. But what about the movies that already seem like video games? There are a fair share of flicks that feature everything from gimmicky camera styles to plotlines that seem like they were ripped right out of the latest console bestseller and plunked into multiplexes. Check out the list below and watch these video game movies that aren’t video game movies. 1. Elephant (2003): This Gus Van Sant film was inspired by the Columbine school shooters, who were in turn supposedly inspired by video games Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. The movie is made up of extremely long tracking shots, filmed just behind the character the story is currently following. By design, this makes the film look like a thirdperson game like Grand Theft Auto, except without all the hookers and drug-running. 2. Starship Troopers (1999): Invading aliens that look like bugs sounds like the plot of Ender’s Game, but the movie looks a whole lot like Halo. Grunt marines blowing things apart with shotguns, massive orbital ships that don’t do much else except explode in space and drop mission-important debris all over the place, and one badass soldier who survives through everything. Like Halo, this is also about to become a trilogy as Caspar Van Diem reprises his leading role. 3. Lady in the Lake (1947): Chalk this one up as a massive failure in cinematic innovation. Lady in the Lake was filmed entirely from the first person point of view of the main character, and you’d only occasionally see his hand lighting a cigarette, opening a door, etc. Before the Doom generation there was this Philip Marlowe vehicle with Robert Montgomery in the lead role, and it pretty much plunged off of a cliff while on fire. 4. Clash of the Titans (1981): Before games like Everquest and World of Warcraft sent dozens of digital denizens off on endless quests in search of trinkets, this was the roleplaying genre in movie form. Perseus had to head out in search of several magic items like a sword and a shield before he could could fight the Gods and let the end credits begin. They’re remaking this movie with a 2010 release date, and it had damn better well have Bubo the mechanical owl in it. 5. TRON (1982): While there have been other movies about video games, like Joysticks, The Wizard and The Last Starfighter, Tron was the first movie that was actually about the development of games, and featured a game designer getting zapped into the artificial world he’d helped create. It featured cutting-edge CGI graphics, and is still considered the pinnacle of gaming + movies. This movie also ushered in the TRON coin-op arcade game, which chewed millions of quarters from the pockets of kids eager to get digitized. Bonus Level: Movies with video game scenes in them, even though they aren’t video game movies. National Lampoon’s Vacation: Genre mixing video games as Russ tries to eat the Family Truckster with Pac-Man while Audrey zaps him with a spider. Poor Clark can’t even get a break when simply planning vacations. If you can name the home computer system that the Griswold’s used, then you’re either a high-level nerd, a Vacation-o-phile, or just living in the 80s. The Beach: Leonardo DiCaprio goes slightly nuts and hallucinates that he’s in a video game while waiting in the jungle in this Danny Boyle-directed movie. Too bad it wasn’t as good as the book, which actually didn’t even feature this video game scene. When the little one-off scene you film to show how crazy your main character is becoming end up being better than the entire movie, you’re in trouble. Crank: The opening credits for Crank tell the story of the movie in 8-bit graphics, along with cheesy techno music. Chev’s vitals have to stay about a certain level, or else he buys it. They’ll be reprising this in the credits for Crank 2, if you can stand to ride it all over again. Think about packing a tranquilizer. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/achance42/archive/2007/8/29/19121.aspx Post By: achance42
Post To: Weasel Words on Film
Post Date: 8/29/2007 3:14:00 PM
Body: I really can't find the right words to describe how I felt after seeing Gus Van Sant's Elephant. "Violated" isn't quite right, nor is "manipulated," which I think has a negative connotation. It's a disturbing film, which has left many of its viewers feeling violated and/or manipulated but those adjectives are much too superficial to explain how it made me feel. Without a doubt, this anatomy of a school shooting, loosely based on the Columbine tragedy, is one of the most bold and brilliant American films made this decade. But I can't say that I liked it. I think it's well-made and I recommend it highly. It's just wrong to say that you like a film like this.The title of the film itself is as much a topic of discussion as its content. The official answer is that Elephant was the title of a short about killings in Ireland and Van Sant named his film after that. That original short took its name from the adage, "the elephant in the room," something so big and horrible that everyone's too polite to talk about it. And finally, my favorite, there is the Buddhist story about old blind men who were trying to learn about elephants from only touching its tusk. Which is to say that one can learn about the reason behind school shootings simply by examining some aspects of one. With a title like that, the film has a lot to live up to; frighteningly, it does. Elephant runs on a fractured timeline but it's less of a gimmick than a necessity to show events that happen simultaneously. We are introduced to many characters as they make their way to school in the morning. To name them all now would be unnecessary, as their individual characters are not important. Their personalities don't really stand out, nor are they supposed to; they're just regular American kids. One boy has a father who is either an alcoholic or mentally ill (the ambiguity of which contributes to the surreal poetic tone of the film); another is a photographer looking to improve his portfolio; another is having problems with his girlfriend; a girl in gym class is uncomfortable with showing her legs and is hounded by the gym teacher to wear shorts. These are kids we all knew or were in high school. And then there's Eric and Alex, two friends who decide to take revenge on the kids who harass them in school by shooting them. The single most disturbing thing about this film is the lucidity with which they put their plan into action. There is a scene late in the film where we see Eric and Alex going over a map of the school, detailing where they will do what. "Most importantly, have fun," Alex says to Eric before they drive to the school. The shooting only takes up the last 20 minutes of the film. The hour before it is comprised mainly of students walking from place to place in the school, very long takes following them as they go about their daily lives. This refusal to look away from even the most mundane activities (we watch as one boy develops a roll of film he shot, which if you've ever developed film yourself, you know it's not interesting in the least) punctuates the fact that we're watching the final moments in these kids' lives. If anything bad can be said about Elephant, it is that it assumes you know what the film is about ahead of time; otherwise, most viewers would ask themselves, "What the hell am I watching these kids walk around a school all day for?"*SPOILER ALERT - YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP PAST THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS*Van Sant is guilty of a little manipulation but only slightly and for good reason. Late in the film, the character of Benny, one of the presumably few black kids in the school, is introduced. Benny is tall, strong, with cornrows and a slow, confident gait. In short, you think this big black man is about to kick some scrawny white-boy ass. Wrong. Benny dies trying to get the drop on Eric, who has the principal in his crosshairs.Van Sant has two statements to make here, one about his art and one about his subject. Benny is meant to conjure up images of the black hero, particularly of films like George Romero's Dead series (the shootings have already begun when we meet Benny, so Elephant has essentially become a horror film at this point). Benny silently helps Acadia, a girl we meet briefly in the beginning, out the window before continuing his trip through the school, presumably to find the killers. The audience is meant to think that Benny is going to stop this reign of terror but once Eric guns him down without so much as a second thought, it becomes clear that the point of having Benny in the movie at all was to set the audience up for that letdown. Because in reality, the likelihood of an easy end to a situation like that is very low. Like I said, it's manipulative, but Van Sant has enough of a reputation that he deserves a second thought for anything that doesn't sit right initially.*END SPOILERS*I was so shaken by this film (and you will NEVER hear Fur Elise or Moonlight Sonata without the hairs standing up on the back of your neck after seeing this film) that I had to run right to IMDb and check out how other people felt about it. For the 7.2/10 user rating that it has, there sure are a lot of people that hated the film, or said that they did. And I can understand it completely. A film that leaves you so emotionally bruised is hard to enjoy, impossible even. But whether or not it strikes a chord with you, you will not forget this film.But this is the point of Elephant. Violence is not something that should be easily dismissable. Incidents like this don't resolve themselves easily and cleanly, as anyone who was present at Columbine High School in 1999 or Santana High School in 2001 (or even so much as watched CNN coverage of these) can attest to. As a matter of fact, by ending the film where he does - unresolved on screen but with a grim certainty of the trajectory of future events - Van Sant lets us off the hook; it's such an abrupt ending that the only explanation for it is mercy.
]]>Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:14:00 GMTachance42Weasel Words on Film8/29/2007 3:14:00 PMI really can&#39;t find the right words to describe how I felt after seeing Gus Van Sant&#39;s Elephant. &quot;Violated&quot; isn&#39;t quite right, nor is &quot;manipulated,&quot; which I think has a negative connotation. It&#39;s a disturbing film, which has left many of its viewers feeling violated and/or manipulated but those adjectives are much too superficial to explain how it made me feel. Without a doubt, this anatomy of a school shooting, loosely based on the Columbine tragedy, is one of the most bold and brilliant American films made this decade. But I can&#39;t say that I liked it. I think it&#39;s well-made and I recommend it highly. It&#39;s just wrong to say that you like a film like this.The title of the film itself is as much a topic of discussion as its content. The official answer is that Elephant was the title of a short about killings in Ireland and Van Sant named his film after that. That original short took its name from the adage, &quot;the elephant in the room,&quot; something so big and horrible that everyone&#39;s too polite to talk about it. And finally, my favorite, there is the Buddhist story about old blind men who were trying to learn about elephants from only touching its tusk. Which is to say that one can learn about the reason behind school shootings simply by examining some aspects of one. With a title like that, the film has a lot to live up to; frighteningly, it does. Elephant runs on a fractured timeline but it&#39;s less of a gimmick than a necessity to show events that happen simultaneously. We are introduced to many characters as they make their way to school in the morning. To name them all now would be unnecessary, as their individual characters are not important. Their personalities don&#39;t really stand out, nor are they supposed to; they&#39;re just regular American kids. One boy has a father who is either an alcoholic or mentally ill (the ambiguity of which contributes to the surreal poetic tone of the film); another is a photographer looking to improve his portfolio; another is having problems with his girlfriend; a girl in gym class is uncomfortable with showing her legs and is hounded by the gym teacher to wear shorts. These are kids we all knew or were in high school. And then there&#39;s Eric and Alex, two friends who decide to take revenge on the kids who harass them in school by shooting them. The single most disturbing thing about this film is the lucidity with which they put their plan into action. There is a scene late in the film where we see Eric and Alex going over a map of the school, detailing where they will do what. &quot;Most importantly, have fun,&quot; Alex says to Eric before they drive to the school. The shooting only takes up the last 20 minutes of the film. The hour before it is comprised mainly of students walking from place to place in the school, very long takes following them as they go about their daily lives. This refusal to look away from even the most mundane activities (we watch as one boy develops a roll of film he shot, which if you&#39;ve ever developed film yourself, you know it&#39;s not interesting in the least) punctuates the fact that we&#39;re watching the final moments in these kids&#39; lives. If anything bad can be said about Elephant, it is that it assumes you know what the film is about ahead of time; otherwise, most viewers would ask themselves, &quot;What the hell am I watching these kids walk around a school all day for?&quot;*SPOILER ALERT - YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP PAST THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS*Van Sant is guilty of a little manipulation but only slightly and for good reason. Late in the film, the character of Benny, one of the presumably few black kids in the school, is introduced. Benny is tall, strong, with cornrows and a slow, confident gait. In short, you think this big black man is about to kick some scrawny white-boy ass. Wrong. Benny dies trying to get the drop on Eric, who has the principal in his crosshairs.Van Sant has two statements to make here, one about his art and one about his subject. Benny is meant to conjure up images of the black hero, particularly of films like George Romero&#39;s Dead series (the shootings have already begun when we meet Benny, so Elephant has essentially become a horror film at this point). Benny silently helps Acadia, a girl we meet briefly in the beginning, out the window before continuing his trip through the school, presumably to find the killers. The audience is meant to think that Benny is going to stop this reign of terror but once Eric guns him down without so much as a second thought, it becomes clear that the point of having Benny in the movie at all was to set the audience up for that letdown. Because in reality, the likelihood of an easy end to a situation like that is very low. Like I said, it&#39;s manipulative, but Van Sant has enough of a reputation that he deserves a second thought for anything that doesn&#39;t sit right initially.*END SPOILERS*I was so shaken by this film (and you will NEVER hear Fur Elise or Moonlight Sonata without the hairs standing up on the back of your neck after seeing this film) that I had to run right to IMDb and check out how other people felt about it. For the 7.2/10 user rating that it has, there sure are a lot of people that hated the film, or said that they did. And I can understand it completely. A film that leaves you so emotionally bruised is hard to enjoy, impossible even. But whether or not it strikes a chord with you, you will not forget this film.But this is the point of Elephant. Violence is not something that should be easily dismissable. Incidents like this don&#39;t resolve themselves easily and cleanly, as anyone who was present at Columbine High School in 1999 or Santana High School in 2001 (or even so much as watched CNN coverage of these) can attest to. As a matter of fact, by ending the film where he does - unresolved on screen but with a grim certainty of the trajectory of future events - Van Sant lets us off the hook; it&#39;s such an abrupt ending that the only explanation for it is mercy. http://www.spout.com/groups/Top_5/Re_Top_5_movies_that_take_place_within_24_hours/190/17361/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: tmoney
Post To: Top 5
Post Date: 8/5/2007 3:51:49 PM
Body: Great topic! This one will take some thought. Some films really emphasize the 24 hour period thing (run lola run), and others you wouldn't really consciously think about the 24 hour time frame (the hours for example, I never noticed it was only a one day thing and i've seen it three times.) 1. Do The Right Thing - Possibly one of the greatest films ever made. 2. The Celebration - The best of the Dogme 95 films. If you haven't seen this film I highly recommend it.3. Elephant - A really beautiful, tragic film with a truely unique style.4.Roger Dodger - An uncle teaches his nephew how to score with the ladies. (Well there is one scene in the very end which takes place later.)5. The Lady Vanishes - an often overlooked Hitchcock film where a woman dissapears on a train. It's been a while since I've seen it but I'm pretty sure it spans 24 hours.I'll second The Hours, Magnolia, and Night of the Living Dead, some of my favorites. I have yet to see before sunrise, but I am really looking forward to it.
]]>Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:51:49 GMTtmoneyTop 58/5/2007 3:51:49 PMGreat topic! This one will take some thought. Some films really emphasize the 24 hour period thing (run lola run), and others you wouldn&#39;t really consciously think about the 24 hour time frame (the hours for example, I never noticed it was only a one day thing and i&#39;ve seen it three times.) 1. Do The Right Thing - Possibly one of the greatest films ever made. 2. The Celebration - The best of the Dogme 95 films. If you haven&#39;t seen this film I highly recommend it.3. Elephant - A really beautiful, tragic film with a truely unique style.4.Roger Dodger - An uncle teaches his nephew how to score with the ladies. (Well there is one scene in the very end which takes place later.)5. The Lady Vanishes - an often overlooked Hitchcock film where a woman dissapears on a train. It&#39;s been a while since I&#39;ve seen it but I&#39;m pretty sure it spans 24 hours.I&#39;ll second The Hours, Magnolia, and Night of the Living Dead, some of my favorites. I have yet to see before sunrise, but I am really looking forward to it. http://www.spout.com/blogs/ohkthnks/archive/2007/7/29/16813.aspx Post By: ohkthnks
Post To: ohkthnks Blog
Post Date: 7/29/2007 7:02:08 PM
Body: this movie can be looked at in two ways, in my opinion.if you look at this for some sort of entertainment, you will, without doubt, hate it. it's very slow paced and drags on. it likes to showcase the really boring parts of a person's life like walking alone down a long hallway of a school. if you look at it from an artistic point of view, it's beautiful in that it tries to capture real life under abnormal circumstances. anyway ... all the while i was watching it, i kept thinking to myself: i paid 4 bucks for this, so just sit through it. and what's on the DVD cover is true. this movie is unforgettable ... whether that be in a negative or positive sense of the word.
]]>Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:02:08 GMTohkthnksohkthnks Blog7/29/2007 7:02:08 PMthis movie can be looked at in two ways, in my opinion.if you look at this for some sort of entertainment, you will, without doubt, hate it. it&#39;s very slow paced and drags on. it likes to showcase the really boring parts of a person&#39;s life like walking alone down a long hallway of a school. if you look at it from an artistic point of view, it&#39;s beautiful in that it tries to capture real life under abnormal circumstances. anyway ... all the while i was watching it, i kept thinking to myself: i paid 4 bucks for this, so just sit through it. and what&#39;s on the DVD cover is true. this movie is unforgettable ... whether that be in a negative or positive sense of the word. http://www.spout.com/blogs/bigjefflebowski/archive/2007/7/18/15202.aspx Post By: BigJeffLebowski
Post To: BigJeffLebowski Blog
Post Date: 7/18/2007 3:26:00 PM
Body: As far as sex symbols go, few are willing to plumb the depths of depravity as fully and as frequently as Asia Argento. This is significant not only in that it opens her to a world of film roles at which other actress would likely scoff, but also because her magnetism infuses even her most deplorable characters with an intrinsic, unquantifiable duende that makes other characters’ attractions to them a little more explicable. No film I’ve seen of hers demonstrates this more definitively than The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, which she also co-wrote and directed from the faux autobiographical works of JT LeRoy. It is important that the film’s -- and the stories’ -- lack of authenticity be addressed in any critical assessment of the work. Argento begins her film with a close-up of what is presumably her personal copy of “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” complete with marginalia and annotations. The audience is immediately aware of the artifice of the film; this is an adaptation, it is playacting. Filmmakers such as Godard, Fellini, and Bergman have used similar framing devices to attune their audiences to the inherent lie of the cinema, that what we see as active, moving documents of life are nothing more than manufactured images flickering in the darkness. This can be used to draw attention to the philosophical or thematic aspects of a film, or simply to give the audience a moment of cathartic release, in which they can let go of their breath, sit back in their seats, and assure themselves, Yes, it was only a movie. In The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, it does give the audience a certain leeway; it tells us it’s okay to watch passively, ineffectually, as countless censurable acts occur before us. It’s one thing that we are given this amnesty within the framework of the cinema, but it is still disconcerting when we realize that Argento made her film before it was publicly announced that JT LeRoy was in fact a literary construction, no more a real person than Huckleberry Finn or Kilgore Trout; and that she may very well have made her film under the pretenses of docudrama rather than fiction. Argento plays Sarah, a 23 year old junkie prostitute who has recently reacquired custody of her son Jeremiah (played by Jimmy Bennett at age 7, and by Dylan and Cole Sprouse several years later). The plot of the film -- which is to say the concurrent theme of its loosely assembled, ragged strands of a story -- follows Sarah and her innumerable misguided abuses of maternal authority. Leaving their home with Jeremiah’s belongings in a garbage bag, Sarah jumps from man to man, home to home, town to town, with Jeremiah in tow, occasionally leaving him in a car or at the home of her most recently jilted lover. While Sarah gallivants about, getting her money from hooking and her food from trash cans, Jeremiah is left with a string of surrogate fathers. Most of them are left incognizant in Sarah’s wake; all of them are abusive. Time and time again, we are given glimmers of hope, only to have them extinguished within seconds: one of Sarah’s countless men shows sympathy for the newly orphaned child, before pathetically raping him; another offers him money for a fresh meal to ammend his mother’s negligence, only to use the diversion to drive off without Jeremiah or Sarah. One wonders why such an inept and unwilling mother would want a child so badly. Sarah is unnervingly blunt when she insists, “I’m your mother, all right? Can’t say I wanted you. Can’t say I didn’t do a rabbit’s tricks to try an’ get rid of you. If my father’d let me, you’d long been flushed down some toilet, you understand?” What is uniquely disconcerting about the scene -- and about Argento’s delivery, especially -- is that Sarah doesn’t say this with remorse; nor does she say it as a warning. Sarah’s deplorable account of Jeremiah’s unwelcome entry to the world is stated plainly, as a fact, as information meant to give Jeremiah some sense of context. But still, Sarah is prone to inexplicable and incongruous moments of tenderness and affection for her son. And just as shadows are darkest in the brightest light, her failings and transgressions as a mother become doubly afflictive when considered alongside her few maternal moments. Jeremiah, seemingly orphaned for good, bounces around for the next several years, in which we learn: Peter Fonda makes a creepy grandfather, Ben Foster makes a creepy cousin, Winona Ryder makes a creepy counselor, and, well, basically everyone within Jeremiah’s sphere is creepy and, in some way, mentally or morally damaged. Every figure of authority leads Jeremiah into temptation, and then punishes him for succumbing to it. It’s a miracle he functions as well as he does; which is not to say he functions well, mind you, but he doesn’t become a catatonic or a suicide, which given the circumstances, is pretty damn impressive. The most unsettling aspect of the film is that Sarah is, astonishingly, the most constant and reliable force in Jeremiah’s life. For all the distant relatives and the truck stop hookups and jilted husbands and fiancés, Sarah is the one person who always comes back to Jeremiah. Is this why he dabbles in transvestitism? Why he attempts to seduce his mother’s boyfriends? I can assume that’s what Argento is driving at, but she is too concerned with the verisimilitude of her characters’ depravity to do more than hint at -- if not accidentally stumble upon -- that kind of psychological depth. What Argento has crafted is a deeply disquieting film about the vulnerability of youth and the fallibility of icons and idols, be they personal, religious, or other. As a visceral, evocative, and purely demonstrative work, it succeeds at its vocation. What Argento has failed to do, however, is offer any kind of redemption for her characters. It’s no accident that Sarah’s final abduction of Jeremiah seems at once liberating and binding; he is so damaged by his upbringing that perpetuating this debauched cycle may well be the only way he can survive in the world. But what message do we take from this? Such are the unjust ways of the world? How blind and senseless we humans are? This kind of vacant morality worked superlatively in a film like Elephant; but as Gus Van Sant demonstrated when he applied the same technique to Last Days, sometimes it reflects nothing more than an empty nihilism on behalf of the characters and their progenitors.
]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:26:00 GMTBigJeffLebowskiBigJeffLebowski Blog7/18/2007 3:26:00 PMAs far as sex symbols go, few are willing to plumb the depths of depravity as fully and as frequently as Asia Argento. This is significant not only in that it opens her to a world of film roles at which other actress would likely scoff, but also because her magnetism infuses even her most deplorable characters with an intrinsic, unquantifiable duende that makes other characters&rsquo; attractions to them a little more explicable. No film I&rsquo;ve seen of hers demonstrates this more definitively than The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, which she also co-wrote and directed from the faux autobiographical works of JT LeRoy. It is important that the film&rsquo;s -- and the stories&rsquo; -- lack of authenticity be addressed in any critical assessment of the work. Argento begins her film with a close-up of what is presumably her personal copy of &ldquo;The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,&rdquo; complete with marginalia and annotations. The audience is immediately aware of the artifice of the film; this is an adaptation, it is playacting. Filmmakers such as Godard, Fellini, and Bergman have used similar framing devices to attune their audiences to the inherent lie of the cinema, that what we see as active, moving documents of life are nothing more than manufactured images flickering in the darkness. This can be used to draw attention to the philosophical or thematic aspects of a film, or simply to give the audience a moment of cathartic release, in which they can let go of their breath, sit back in their seats, and assure themselves, Yes, it was only a movie. In The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, it does give the audience a certain leeway; it tells us it&rsquo;s okay to watch passively, ineffectually, as countless censurable acts occur before us. It&rsquo;s one thing that we are given this amnesty within the framework of the cinema, but it is still disconcerting when we realize that Argento made her film before it was publicly announced that JT LeRoy was in fact a literary construction, no more a real person than Huckleberry Finn or Kilgore Trout; and that she may very well have made her film under the pretenses of docudrama rather than fiction. Argento plays Sarah, a 23 year old junkie prostitute who has recently reacquired custody of her son Jeremiah (played by Jimmy Bennett at age 7, and by Dylan and Cole Sprouse several years later). The plot of the film -- which is to say the concurrent theme of its loosely assembled, ragged strands of a story -- follows Sarah and her innumerable misguided abuses of maternal authority. Leaving their home with Jeremiah&rsquo;s belongings in a garbage bag, Sarah jumps from man to man, home to home, town to town, with Jeremiah in tow, occasionally leaving him in a car or at the home of her most recently jilted lover. While Sarah gallivants about, getting her money from hooking and her food from trash cans, Jeremiah is left with a string of surrogate fathers. Most of them are left incognizant in Sarah&rsquo;s wake; all of them are abusive. Time and time again, we are given glimmers of hope, only to have them extinguished within seconds: one of Sarah&rsquo;s countless men shows sympathy for the newly orphaned child, before pathetically raping him; another offers him money for a fresh meal to ammend his mother&rsquo;s negligence, only to use the diversion to drive off without Jeremiah or Sarah. One wonders why such an inept and unwilling mother would want a child so badly. Sarah is unnervingly blunt when she insists, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m your mother, all right? Can&rsquo;t say I wanted you. Can&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t do a rabbit&rsquo;s tricks to try an&rsquo; get rid of you. If my father&rsquo;d let me, you&rsquo;d long been flushed down some toilet, you understand?&rdquo; What is uniquely disconcerting about the scene -- and about Argento&rsquo;s delivery, especially -- is that Sarah doesn&rsquo;t say this with remorse; nor does she say it as a warning. Sarah&rsquo;s deplorable account of Jeremiah&rsquo;s unwelcome entry to the world is stated plainly, as a fact, as information meant to give Jeremiah some sense of context. But still, Sarah is prone to inexplicable and incongruous moments of tenderness and affection for her son. And just as shadows are darkest in the brightest light, her failings and transgressions as a mother become doubly afflictive when considered alongside her few maternal moments. Jeremiah, seemingly orphaned for good, bounces around for the next several years, in which we learn: Peter Fonda makes a creepy grandfather, Ben Foster makes a creepy cousin, Winona Ryder makes a creepy counselor, and, well, basically everyone within Jeremiah&rsquo;s sphere is creepy and, in some way, mentally or morally damaged. Every figure of authority leads Jeremiah into temptation, and then punishes him for succumbing to it. It&rsquo;s a miracle he functions as well as he does; which is not to say he functions well, mind you, but he doesn&rsquo;t become a catatonic or a suicide, which given the circumstances, is pretty damn impressive. The most unsettling aspect of the film is that Sarah is, astonishingly, the most constant and reliable force in Jeremiah&rsquo;s life. For all the distant relatives and the truck stop hookups and jilted husbands and fianc&eacute;s, Sarah is the one person who always comes back to Jeremiah. Is this why he dabbles in transvestitism? Why he attempts to seduce his mother&rsquo;s boyfriends? I can assume that&rsquo;s what Argento is driving at, but she is too concerned with the verisimilitude of her characters&rsquo; depravity to do more than hint at -- if not accidentally stumble upon -- that kind of psychological depth. What Argento has crafted is a deeply disquieting film about the vulnerability of youth and the fallibility of icons and idols, be they personal, religious, or other. As a visceral, evocative, and purely demonstrative work, it succeeds at its vocation. What Argento has failed to do, however, is offer any kind of redemption for her characters. It&rsquo;s no accident that Sarah&rsquo;s final abduction of Jeremiah seems at once liberating and binding; he is so damaged by his upbringing that perpetuating this debauched cycle may well be the only way he can survive in the world. But what message do we take from this? Such are the unjust ways of the world? How blind and senseless we humans are? This kind of vacant morality worked superlatively in a film like Elephant; but as Gus Van Sant demonstrated when he applied the same technique to Last Days, sometimes it reflects nothing more than an empty nihilism on behalf of the characters and their progenitors. http://www.spout.com/groups/Spout_Mavens/Re_The_Heart_is_Deceitful_Above_All_Things/366/15201/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: BigJeffLebowski
Post To: Spout Mavens
Post Date: 7/18/2007 3:25:56 PM
Body: As far as sex symbols go, few are willing to plumb the depths of depravity as fully and as frequently as Asia Argento. This is significant not only in that it opens her to a world of film roles at which other actress would likely scoff, but also because her magnetism infuses even her most deplorable characters with an intrinsic, unquantifiable duende that makes other characters’ attractions to them a little more explicable. No film I’ve seen of hers demonstrates this more definitively than The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, which she also co-wrote and directed from the faux autobiographical works of JT LeRoy. It is important that the film’s -- and the stories’ -- lack of authenticity be addressed in any critical assessment of the work. Argento begins her film with a close-up of what is presumably her personal copy of “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” complete with marginalia and annotations. The audience is immediately aware of the artifice of the film; this is an adaptation, it is playacting. Filmmakers such as Godard, Fellini, and Bergman have used similar framing devices to attune their audiences to the inherent lie of the cinema, that what we see as active, moving documents of life are nothing more than manufactured images flickering in the darkness. This can be used to draw attention to the philosophical or thematic aspects of a film, or simply to give the audience a moment of cathartic release, in which they can let go of their breath, sit back in their seats, and assure themselves, Yes, it was only a movie. In The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, it does give the audience a certain leeway; it tells us it’s okay to watch passively, ineffectually, as countless censurable acts occur before us. It’s one thing that we are given this amnesty within the framework of the cinema, but it is still disconcerting when we realize that Argento made her film before it was publicly announced that JT LeRoy was in fact a literary construction, no more a real person than Huckleberry Finn or Kilgore Trout; and that she may very well have made her film under the pretenses of docudrama rather than fiction. Argento plays Sarah, a 23 year old junkie prostitute who has recently reacquired custody of her son Jeremiah (played by Jimmy Bennett at age 7, and by Dylan and Cole Sprouse several years later). The plot of the film -- which is to say the concurrent theme of its loosely assembled, ragged strands of a story -- follows Sarah and her innumerable misguided abuses of maternal authority. Leaving their home with Jeremiah’s belongings in a garbage bag, Sarah jumps from man to man, home to home, town to town, with Jeremiah in tow, occasionally leaving him in a car or at the home of her most recently jilted lover. While Sarah gallivants about, getting her money from hooking and her food from trash cans, Jeremiah is left with a string of surrogate fathers. Most of them are left incognizant in Sarah’s wake; all of them are abusive. Time and time again, we are given glimmers of hope, only to have them extinguished within seconds: one of Sarah’s countless men shows sympathy for the newly orphaned child, before pathetically raping him; another offers him money for a fresh meal in light of his mother’s negligence, only to use the diversion to drive off without Jeremiah or Sarah. One wonders why such an inept and unwilling mother would want a child so badly. Sarah is unnervingly blunt when she insists, “I’m your mother, all right? Can’t say I wanted you. Can’t say I didn’t do a rabbit’s tricks to try an’ get rid of you. If my father’d let me, you’d long been flushed down some toilet, you understand?” What is uniquely disconcerting about the scene -- and about Argento’s delivery, especially -- is that Sarah doesn’t say this with remorse; nor does she say it as a warning. Sarah’s deplorable account of Jeremiah’s unwelcome entry to the world is stated plainly, as a fact, as information meant to give Jeremiah some sense of context. But still, Sarah is prone to inexplicable and incongruous moments of tenderness and affection for her son. And just as shadows are darkest in the brightest light, her failings and transgressions as a mother become doubly afflictive when considered alongside her few maternal moments. Jeremiah, seemingly orphaned for good, bounces around for the next several years, in which we learn: Peter Fonda makes a creepy grandfather, Ben Foster makes a creepy cousin, Winona Ryder makes a creepy counselor, and, well, basically everyone within Jeremiah’s sphere is creepy and, in some way, mentally or morally damaged. Every figure of authority leads Jeremiah into temptation, and then punishes him for succumbing to it. It’s a miracle he functions as well as he does; which is not to say he functions well, mind you, but he doesn’t become a catatonic or a suicide, which given the circumstances, is pretty damn impressive. The most unsettling aspect of the film is that Sarah is, astonishingly, the most constant and reliable force in Jeremiah’s life. For all the distant relatives and the truck stop hookups and jilted husbands and fiancés, Sarah is the one person who always comes back to Jeremiah. Is this why he dabbles in transvestitism? Why he attempts to seduce his mother’s boyfriends? I can assume that’s what Argento is driving at, but she is too concerned with the verisimilitude of her characters’ depravity to do more than hint at -- if not accidentally stumble upon -- that kind of psychological depth. What Argento has crafted is a deeply disquieting film about the vulnerability of youth and the fallibility of icons and idols, be they personal, religious, or other. As a visceral, evocative, and purely demonstrative work, it succeeds at its vocation. What Argento has failed to do, however, is offer any kind of redemption for her characters. It’s no accident that Sarah’s final abduction of Jeremiah seems at once liberating and binding; he is so damaged by his upbringing that perpetuating this debauched cycle may well be the only way he can survive in the world. But what message do we take from this? Such are the unjust ways of the world? How blind and senseless we humans are? This kind of vacant morality worked superlatively in a film like Elephant; but as Gus Van Sant demonstrated when he applied the same technique to Last Days, sometimes it reflects nothing more than an empty nihilism on behalf of the characters and their progenitors.
]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:25:56 GMTBigJeffLebowskiSpout Mavens7/18/2007 3:25:56 PMAs far as sex symbols go, few are willing to plumb the depths of depravity as fully and as frequently as Asia Argento. This is significant not only in that it opens her to a world of film roles at which other actress would likely scoff, but also because her magnetism infuses even her most deplorable characters with an intrinsic, unquantifiable duende that makes other characters&rsquo; attractions to them a little more explicable. No film I&rsquo;ve seen of hers demonstrates this more definitively than The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, which she also co-wrote and directed from the faux autobiographical works of JT LeRoy. It is important that the film&rsquo;s -- and the stories&rsquo; -- lack of authenticity be addressed in any critical assessment of the work. Argento begins her film with a close-up of what is presumably her personal copy of &ldquo;The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,&rdquo; complete with marginalia and annotations. The audience is immediately aware of the artifice of the film; this is an adaptation, it is playacting. Filmmakers such as Godard, Fellini, and Bergman have used similar framing devices to attune their audiences to the inherent lie of the cinema, that what we see as active, moving documents of life are nothing more than manufactured images flickering in the darkness. This can be used to draw attention to the philosophical or thematic aspects of a film, or simply to give the audience a moment of cathartic release, in which they can let go of their breath, sit back in their seats, and assure themselves, Yes, it was only a movie. In The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, it does give the audience a certain leeway; it tells us it&rsquo;s okay to watch passively, ineffectually, as countless censurable acts occur before us. It&rsquo;s one thing that we are given this amnesty within the framework of the cinema, but it is still disconcerting when we realize that Argento made her film before it was publicly announced that JT LeRoy was in fact a literary construction, no more a real person than Huckleberry Finn or Kilgore Trout; and that she may very well have made her film under the pretenses of docudrama rather than fiction. Argento plays Sarah, a 23 year old junkie prostitute who has recently reacquired custody of her son Jeremiah (played by Jimmy Bennett at age 7, and by Dylan and Cole Sprouse several years later). The plot of the film -- which is to say the concurrent theme of its loosely assembled, ragged strands of a story -- follows Sarah and her innumerable misguided abuses of maternal authority. Leaving their home with Jeremiah&rsquo;s belongings in a garbage bag, Sarah jumps from man to man, home to home, town to town, with Jeremiah in tow, occasionally leaving him in a car or at the home of her most recently jilted lover. While Sarah gallivants about, getting her money from hooking and her food from trash cans, Jeremiah is left with a string of surrogate fathers. Most of them are left incognizant in Sarah&rsquo;s wake; all of them are abusive. Time and time again, we are given glimmers of hope, only to have them extinguished within seconds: one of Sarah&rsquo;s countless men shows sympathy for the newly orphaned child, before pathetically raping him; another offers him money for a fresh meal in light of his mother&rsquo;s negligence, only to use the diversion to drive off without Jeremiah or Sarah. One wonders why such an inept and unwilling mother would want a child so badly. Sarah is unnervingly blunt when she insists, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m your mother, all right? Can&rsquo;t say I wanted you. Can&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t do a rabbit&rsquo;s tricks to try an&rsquo; get rid of you. If my father&rsquo;d let me, you&rsquo;d long been flushed down some toilet, you understand?&rdquo; What is uniquely disconcerting about the scene -- and about Argento&rsquo;s delivery, especially -- is that Sarah doesn&rsquo;t say this with remorse; nor does she say it as a warning. Sarah&rsquo;s deplorable account of Jeremiah&rsquo;s unwelcome entry to the world is stated plainly, as a fact, as information meant to give Jeremiah some sense of context. But still, Sarah is prone to inexplicable and incongruous moments of tenderness and affection for her son. And just as shadows are darkest in the brightest light, her failings and transgressions as a mother become doubly afflictive when considered alongside her few maternal moments. Jeremiah, seemingly orphaned for good, bounces around for the next several years, in which we learn: Peter Fonda makes a creepy grandfather, Ben Foster makes a creepy cousin, Winona Ryder makes a creepy counselor, and, well, basically everyone within Jeremiah&rsquo;s sphere is creepy and, in some way, mentally or morally damaged. Every figure of authority leads Jeremiah into temptation, and then punishes him for succumbing to it. It&rsquo;s a miracle he functions as well as he does; which is not to say he functions well, mind you, but he doesn&rsquo;t become a catatonic or a suicide, which given the circumstances, is pretty damn impressive. The most unsettling aspect of the film is that Sarah is, astonishingly, the most constant and reliable force in Jeremiah&rsquo;s life. For all the distant relatives and the truck stop hookups and jilted husbands and fianc&eacute;s, Sarah is the one person who always comes back to Jeremiah. Is this why he dabbles in transvestitism? Why he attempts to seduce his mother&rsquo;s boyfriends? I can assume that&rsquo;s what Argento is driving at, but she is too concerned with the verisimilitude of her characters&rsquo; depravity to do more than hint at -- if not accidentally stumble upon -- that kind of psychological depth. What Argento has crafted is a deeply disquieting film about the vulnerability of youth and the fallibility of icons and idols, be they personal, religious, or other. As a visceral, evocative, and purely demonstrative work, it succeeds at its vocation. What Argento has failed to do, however, is offer any kind of redemption for her characters. It&rsquo;s no accident that Sarah&rsquo;s final abduction of Jeremiah seems at once liberating and binding; he is so damaged by his upbringing that perpetuating this debauched cycle may well be the only way he can survive in the world. But what message do we take from this? Such are the unjust ways of the world? How blind and senseless we humans are? This kind of vacant morality worked superlatively in a film like Elephant; but as Gus Van Sant demonstrated when he applied the same technique to Last Days, sometimes it reflects nothing more than an empty nihilism on behalf of the characters and their progenitors. http://www.spout.com/blogs/moviebabe/archive/2007/7/3/13009.aspx Post By: MovieBabe
Post To: MovieBabe Blog
Post Date: 7/3/2007 7:22:00 PM
Body: By Tricia Olszewski Gus Van Sant's Elephant isn't the proverbial one in the living room. Rather, the director titled his fictionalized account of a Columbine-style high-school shooting after the parable in which a group of blind men each feel a different part of a pachyderm—trunk, ear, leg, etc. Each, of course, becomes convinced that he has the correct sense of the animal as a whole. Indeed, Van Sant does offer various fractured perspectives on his subject matter. But he also refrains from judgment completely—which seems more akin to an obvious, hulking problem of the living-room persuasion. After a lingering shot of a clear autumn sky, the film follows several students going about their day in a Portland, Ore., high school: John (John Robinson), who gets in trouble for being tardy when he spends the morning looking after his drunk dad; Eli (Elias McConnell), a polite photographer who scours the campus for candid shots; Nate (Nathan Tyson) and his girlfriend, Carrie (Carrie Finklea), who plan to go off-campus for lunch; Michelle (Kristen Hicks), who's reprimanded for not wearing shorts to gym; and Brittany (Brittany Mountain), Jordan (Jordan Taylor), and Nicole (Nicole George), who make up a gossipy clique. From Michelle's nerd to Nate's jock, all clichés are covered—along with a new post-Columbine archetype: the militants, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen). Unlike the recently released Zero Day, which tells the same story by using the killers' video diary, Elephant focuses on the other students. The movie's tag line describes its subject as "an ordinary high school day"—but the unnatural calm that permeates these halls is unmistakably one that's before the storm. Van Sant amps up the sense of foreboding by focusing on pedestrian activity and favoring endless tracking shots of the backs of students walking through the school's labyrinthine corridors. Conversations, which were largely improvised by the mostly nonprofessional actors, are minimal, mostly overheard in snippets or briefly engaged in by whomever the camera's trained on. In this school, there's never the din of a between-classes rush. The effect is both mesmerizing and frustrating. These students seem already flattened by events that haven't yet occurred. Van Sant's sparing use of music—Beethoven's "Für Elise" alternating between Sonatas No. 14 and 2—combines with the audience's knowledge of what's ahead to lend an atmosphere so elegiac that it borders on ponderous, especially in one extended scene of various activities on the school's outdoor field. But just when you're feeling lulled by the camera's patient observation of the uneventful, the director revisits certain interactions from another character's perspective—a trick that encourages you to scan the scenes for anything you might have missed the first time. Inevitably, there's nothing there, but the lack nevertheless deepens your anticipation of the inevitable. Another light touch, however, is maddening: Elephant's portrait of Alex and Eric is a mere sketch. The two are shown hanging out in Alex's suburban home, one playing a sniper video game and the other a piano. They order weapons off the Internet, watch footage of Hitler on TV, and, in a confusing moment with no context or resolution, kiss in the shower before heading out for their day of violence. Alex is shown getting something thrown at him during a class, but Van Sant otherwise abstains from suggesting reasons for their murderous actions and the flipness with which they execute them: Alex speaks of being able to "pick 'em off, one by one" and advises Eric to "more importantly, just have fun, man!" The actual shootings, despite their lack of gore, are suitably sickening to watch as students fear for their lives in their school's brightly lit rooms. "Eenie, meenie, miney, mo," the phrase uttered by one of the killers as he terrorizes Nate and Carrie in the cafeteria's walk-in freezer, suggests the message that such tragedies are random and unexplainable. But that's as close as Van Sant comes to theorizing in Elephant. Though understandable—there are, naturally, no easy answers—the decision also makes you wonder what the point is: Surely Van Sant meant to do more than conjure 81 minutes' worth of chilling atmosphere.
]]>Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:22:00 GMTMovieBabeMovieBabe Blog7/3/2007 7:22:00 PM By Tricia Olszewski Gus Van Sant's Elephant isn't the proverbial one in the living room. Rather, the director titled his fictionalized account of a Columbine-style high-school shooting after the parable in which a group of blind men each feel a different part of a pachyderm&mdash;trunk, ear, leg, etc. Each, of course, becomes convinced that he has the correct sense of the animal as a whole. Indeed, Van Sant does offer various fractured perspectives on his subject matter. But he also refrains from judgment completely&mdash;which seems more akin to an obvious, hulking problem of the living-room persuasion. After a lingering shot of a clear autumn sky, the film follows several students going about their day in a Portland, Ore., high school: John (John Robinson), who gets in trouble for being tardy when he spends the morning looking after his drunk dad; Eli (Elias McConnell), a polite photographer who scours the campus for candid shots; Nate (Nathan Tyson) and his girlfriend, Carrie (Carrie Finklea), who plan to go off-campus for lunch; Michelle (Kristen Hicks), who's reprimanded for not wearing shorts to gym; and Brittany (Brittany Mountain), Jordan (Jordan Taylor), and Nicole (Nicole George), who make up a gossipy clique. From Michelle's nerd to Nate's jock, all clich&eacute;s are covered&mdash;along with a new post-Columbine archetype: the militants, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen). Unlike the recently released Zero Day, which tells the same story by using the killers' video diary, Elephant focuses on the other students. The movie's tag line describes its subject as "an ordinary high school day"&mdash;but the unnatural calm that permeates these halls is unmistakably one that's before the storm. Van Sant amps up the sense of foreboding by focusing on pedestrian activity and favoring endless tracking shots of the backs of students walking through the school's labyrinthine corridors. Conversations, which were largely improvised by the mostly nonprofessional actors, are minimal, mostly overheard in snippets or briefly engaged in by whomever the camera's trained on. In this school, there's never the din of a between-classes rush. The effect is both mesmerizing and frustrating. These students seem already flattened by events that haven't yet occurred. Van Sant's sparing use of music&mdash;Beethoven's "F&uuml;r Elise" alternating between Sonatas No. 14 and 2&mdash;combines with the audience's knowledge of what's ahead to lend an atmosphere so elegiac that it borders on ponderous, especially in one extended scene of various activities on the school's outdoor field. But just when you're feeling lulled by the camera's patient observation of the uneventful, the director revisits certain interactions from another character's perspective&mdash;a trick that encourages you to scan the scenes for anything you might have missed the first time. Inevitably, there's nothing there, but the lack nevertheless deepens your anticipation of the inevitable. Another light touch, however, is maddening: Elephant's portrait of Alex and Eric is a mere sketch. The two are shown hanging out in Alex's suburban home, one playing a sniper video game and the other a piano. They order weapons off the Internet, watch footage of Hitler on TV, and, in a confusing moment with no context or resolution, kiss in the shower before heading out for their day of violence. Alex is shown getting something thrown at him during a class, but Van Sant otherwise abstains from suggesting reasons for their murderous actions and the flipness with which they execute them: Alex speaks of being able to "pick 'em off, one by one" and advises Eric to "more importantly, just have fun, man!" The actual shootings, despite their lack of gore, are suitably sickening to watch as students fear for their lives in their school's brightly lit rooms. "Eenie, meenie, miney, mo," the phrase uttered by one of the killers as he terrorizes Nate and Carrie in the cafeteria's walk-in freezer, suggests the message that such tragedies are random and unexplainable. But that's as close as Van Sant comes to theorizing in Elephant. Though understandable&mdash;there are, naturally, no easy answers&mdash;the decision also makes you wonder what the point is: Surely Van Sant meant to do more than conjure 81 minutes' worth of chilling atmosphere. http://www.spout.com/blogs/ryanthefate/archive/2007/6/25/12027.aspx Post By: RyantheFATE
Post To: RyantheFATE Blog
Post Date: 6/25/2007 5:52:06 AM
Body: I first checked out Elephant by Gus Van Sant because a friend loved it. Although the story was strong and had a lot of potential, this was an overall, weak film. I understand that Van Sant just picked these kids off of the streets of Portland but he could've at least yelled "CUT!" a few times during the filming due to poor acting. The movie tries to create realism by using abnormally long shots and following students from point a to point b. I was alright with that as well. What I didn't like was that he could never allow any character to have anything that would distinct them from other students emotionally-wise. What I mean by this is that when the students die, I couldn't really feel anything for them.
]]>Mon, 25 Jun 2007 09:52:06 GMTRyantheFATERyantheFATE Blog6/25/2007 5:52:06 AM I first checked out Elephant by Gus Van Sant because a friend loved it. Although the story was strong and had a lot of potential, this was an overall, weak film. I understand that Van Sant just picked these kids off of the streets of Portland but he could&#39;ve at least yelled &quot;CUT!&quot; a few times during the filming due to poor acting. The movie tries to create realism by using abnormally long shots and following students from point a to point b. I was alright with that as well. What I didn&#39;t like was that he could never allow any character to have anything that would distinct them from other students emotionally-wise. What I mean by this is that when the students die, I couldn&#39;t really feel anything for them. http://www.spout.com/blogs/pulpfiction1975-66/archive/2006/4/29/1009.aspx Post By: paul
Post To: PulpFiction1975
Post Date: 5/2/2006 4:22:40 PM
Body: My childhood pretty much took place in The Apostle. Junior High was eerily reminiscent of Welcome to the Dollhouse. My ideal image of High School is The Breakfast Club, but the reality was more like Elephant (before the killing starts). I think my college years were reminiscent of All the Real Girls. I know, none of those guys were in college but—when you consider how much time I spent with my girlfriend—neither was I. I'd say I currently feel most at home in a film I just saw, The Talent Given Us.But what I'd really like to be is a companion white-guy to Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. Not that I want to spend time with Costner, but I love how Kicking Bird describes his journey as "the path to be an authentic human."
]]>Tue, 02 May 2006 20:22:40 GMTpaulPulpFiction19755/2/2006 4:22:40 PMMy childhood pretty much took place in The Apostle. Junior High was eerily reminiscent of Welcome to the Dollhouse. My ideal image of High School is The Breakfast Club, but the reality was more like Elephant (before the killing starts). I think my college years were reminiscent of All the Real Girls. I know, none of those guys were in college but—when you consider how much time I spent with my girlfriend—neither was I. I'd say I currently feel most at home in a film I just saw, The Talent Given Us.But what I'd really like to be is a companion white-guy to Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. Not that I want to spend time with Costner, but I love how Kicking Bird describes his journey as "the path to be an authentic human." http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/Boring/MemberTagFilms.aspxBoring
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