Elephant (2003)

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Directed by Gus Van Sant.

Starring John Robinson, Eric Deulen, Alex Frost, Elias McConnell, Jordan Taylor.

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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

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Reviews and discussions

When A Video Game Movie Isn’t
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

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"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 thirdp ... " [More]

ELEPHANT
by achance42 in Weasel Words on Film

liked it.

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"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 ... " [More]

Re: Top 5 movies that take plac ...
by tmoney in Top 5

liked it.

"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 ... " [More]

don't watch this if you want to ...
by ohkthnks in ohkthnks Blog

is neutral about it.

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"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. " [More]

"Keep your eyes open and y ...
by BigJeffLebowski in BigJeffLebowski Blog

loved it.

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"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 aw ... " [More]

Re: The Heart is Deceitful Abov ...
by BigJeffLebowski in Spout Mavens

loved it.

"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 awar ... " [More]

Elephant
by MovieBabe in MovieBabe Blog

hasn't rated it.

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"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 ... " [More]

Could've been better
by RyantheFATE in RyantheFATE Blog

lost interest.

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"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. " [More]

Re: Starring You
by paul in PulpFiction1975

loved it.

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"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." " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

liked it.

In Elephant, Gus Van Sant takes the lessons in minimalism he learned while making Gerry and uses them to achieve socially relevant art. Van Sant utilizes very long takes that often involve slow, intricate, and complicated Steadicam work. The style serves the film's goals, not the filmmakers' egos. The viewer gets the sense that what is transpiring onscreen has not been painstakingly choreographed, but has simply been recorded on the fly. The unknown teenagers cast in all of the roles underscore the verisimilitude. While the film could easily slip into sensationalism and horror clichés, Van Sant keeps everything even-handed. He never wallows in gore and terror, but he still manages to show the attack in such a way that recognizes the horror without emotionally hijacking the viewer. One gets the sense that the director has cried all he can for the victims and now wants to figure out why this happened. Van Sant has said that the title of the film references the classic "elephant in the room" -- the thing affecting everybody that nobody wants to talk about. Van Sant does not appear to take a stand on why his characters commit these terrible acts -- he offers up no answers. But what he does offer, with the help of Harris Savides' observant camerawork, is a documentary-like presentation of two days in a place that experiences a school massacre. Great art often asks questions. With Elephant, Van Sant has created art that provides a reasoned, non-judgmental starting point for an important conversation about our culture. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Tags: highschool , massacre , teenagers , hysteria , school
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