Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant)

Like a lot of people, I find Gus Van Sant to be an extremely annoying film maker, especially with the slapping together of his soporific "Death Trilogy" - three unrelated films in which the director ignorantly mistakes laziness for "artistic". When making "Elephant", Van Sant opted for a cast of totally non-actors (and it shows) and decided to utilize his signature method of continuous walking sequences shot in a single, consecutive take. I get the impression that Van Sant feels quite artistic while shooting these ultra-tedious steady-cam shots, despite how much his self-indulgence makes him look like a huge asshole and total hack. If anything, though, I'd say "Elephant" is the LEAST shitty of the "trilogy", due to the eventual foray into some pretty sensitive subject matter involving a Columbine-esque school shooting.

The plot is pretty depthless. We follow around (literally) different high school kids throughout a seemingly typical day. One kid with an alcoholic dad who tried to drive him to school, a hipster photographer, a group of bulimic girls, a football player, some doggish-looking chick and the inevitable shooters. They take turns being followed around, endlessly, by the camera as they walk around school - no place in particular...

Van Sant kills a LOT of time with the pointless, drawn out steady-cam shots and spends just the last 20 minutes on the shooting, of which, is when the film improved cuz something finally happens, though it still just comes across as meaningless and exploitive. No solid motives are given to the shooter's violent rampage, which Van Sant claims was intentional and I don't doubt that. He's intentionally lazy... The director's take on independent, minimalist film making is very much skewed and one-dimensional, as he clearly just likes to take the easy (and cheap) way out by improvising, but he does it TERRIBLY. When you have shitty unskilled, non-actors improvising, chances are it'll turn out like THIS. Uninteresting and embarrassing to watch.

The only thing I appreciated about "Elephant" is the fact that Van Sant touched on the 'taboo' and relevant topic of school shootings and carried it out in a very unapologetic and almost mean-spirited and offensive manner. That said, if he had actually given the viewer something or someone to connect with, the movie could've possibly been much more gripping. Following people around with a camera for 10 minutes at a time down hallways doesn't constitute 'development', so when they finally start getting blasted by the Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold-type "oddball" students heavily armed with assault rifles, I wasn't all that shocked or affected. Still, "Elephant" IS more watchable than Van Sant's previous movie in the insipid "Death Trilogy", "Gerry". At least this one ends with more of a BANG.