Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, which premiered at Cannes and won the Palm d’Or back in 2003, is a film that has only become less and less watchable with time. It is not uncommon for a film to strike a chord with audiences on its initial release and then fall out of fashion a few decades later. Or sometimes a film that feels wildly offbeat takes time to digest and ultimately finds a niche fan base. But Elephant is neither, and it’s no fault of anyone involved. The problem is that it has become eerily realistic and, in turn, terrifying and tragic. On top of all that, it’s uniquely American, which, in many ways, makes it all the more disheartening.
Inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School shootings that left 15 students, including the perpetrators, dead, Elephant follows a series of high schoolers around during the hour or so of their day before two of their classmates open fire with automatic rifles. If you don’t know the direction the film is going, you’re likely to be somewhat bored for the first 65 minutes and then extremely disturbed for the remaining 15. If you do know beforehand, you’re likely to sit with a pit in your stomach as the film gently hints at what is coming.
Van Sant made the film as the second part of his “Death Trilogy,” three films released between 2002 and 2005 all inspired by real-life deaths. 2002’s Gerry was about the death of two hikers, while 2005’s Last Days was a fictionalized account of the final days of Kurt Cobain’s life. Elephant doesn’t feel like it treads into exploitation genres like rape or torture porn, but watching it twenty years on begs the question of whether it needed to be made. What did we really gain from seeing this film?
Perhaps, if things had turned out differently, it could be looked at as a masterpiece, as a snapshot of a dark time in American history, or as an example of using long takes and tracking shots to build tension. But that really only could have been the case if the United States had effectively addressed the issue the film presents so clearly: that disturbed, socially ostracized, sexually repressed young boys influenced by Nazi propaganda and in easy possession of semi-automatic rifles create the perfect recipe for a massacre. If we’d addressed the issue that continues to plague us, the movie would feel more historical or like a memorialization of those lost at Columbine. Instead, we live in a society that recalls the tragedy as one of the foremost events in the current era of unrelenting gun violence perpetuated across countless public spaces: schools, grocery stores, concerts, places of worship and nightclubs.
Through the first two-thirds, Elephant highlights the varying qualities of students around campus; one boy deals with an alcoholic father, a trio of girls make themselves puke after lunch or the socially awkward girl who doesn’t want to wear shorts to her gym class and would rather shelve books in the library. All of their issues are, to a degree, very important and time-consuming or at least take a toll on their confidence. But all of that ceases to mean anything the day two students show up fully armed.
Aside from the shooting sequence, much of Elephant feels uneventful. Long takes follow characters from behind as they mull around campus, or pan slowly to orient the viewer on who is talking. Sometimes music drowns out the dialogue, but none of that really matters. In fact, there was hardly even a script completed before filming. Van Sant originally intended to make a documentary about Columbine but ultimately decided to produce a fiction feature. The director opted for primarily non-professional actors and had them improvise a majority of the dialogue. Elephant at times feels less like cinema and more like raw footage.
There are a few déjà vu-inducing moments throughout where the same scene is shown for a second or third time but from another character’s perspective. At one point, Elias, a photographer, runs into John in the hallway. He takes a quick picture of John, and as he is doing so, the school bell rings, and we see Michelle begin to jog to make it to class. That scene repeats itself three times, Michelle’s perspective being the last we see, and mere moments later, she’s the first to die right after she starts to shelve books. By repeating the scene, Van Sant drives home how connected students are even if they aren’t friendly with one another. The collective trauma of seeing or knowing your peer was shot dead is unbearable. John is the first to realize something is about to go wrong and ultimately survives but was just steps away from the first victim minutes before and happened to walk in the opposite direction. We know how bad John is going to feel despite the film cutting off before the shooting stops.
Elephant isn’t a bad film, but the subject matter’s continued relevance makes watching it a burden. If you have the stomach to handle it, go right ahead; if not, you’re probably not alone.
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