elephant

I saw Elephant last night, this is the new Gus Van Sant movie about high school and two kids who go nuts and hunt students at their school...it's interesting how it's all tied well together and the cinematography was outstanding...the camera work shifts around and several scenes are presented in a variety of perspectives...some scenes leave us guessing only to find out more later...there's interesting metaphors like in the library near the end of the movie (not a spoiler) where one kid shoots with his camera (his hobby and fascination) ironically shooting the shooters who obviously shoot with guns (their hobby and fascination)...talk about stereotypical gay/homosexual behavior in a classroom only to (the rest is a spoiler! scroll down)







find out later that the two culprits are gay lovers...while gus van sant certainly shows how a high school even in the well-to-do suburbs of Oregon could have this happen (a supposedly more liberal area than say Columbine, where one would think there was less guns), his painting of what could possibly trigger such an outburst is interesting...sure the two killers play a videogame--but it's one that's devoid of plot and is simply a killing game where the players shoot their victims in a bleak landscape of nothingness in the back with no dismay of mercy only to have their victims feet rooting out of the ground in mock death...he also shows how the kids get their guns from online stores but refrains from having the automatic machineguns that movies like the terminator series or even the videogames he blames would use--these are more calculated singular shots...he also shows how each child in the movie is somehow affected by some affliction that all children go through or involved with--but these are the children who don't snap...one kid has to take the keys from his drunken father (at 10am int he morning no less!) and drive himself to school while he waits for his family to come and pick his dad up, three girls all have bulimia and throw up their meager lunch (despite their skinniness), another kid gets a girl pregnant, while yet another one is beaten by someone and doesn't want to wear shorts to expose the bruises...its in this way that he shows that indeed we're all different, we all have our problems, and we all choose how to deal with them...the one character most may have problems with is Benny the black kid who helps another kid leave and then traverses the halls trying to figure out what's going on...he's also the only black kid that we're shown...and there's good reason for that...gus van sant is first trying to establish that it's not always "the blacks to blame" as our media and news tries to convince us all the time and secondly it's also homage to columbine...the most riveting nature of this movie is the storytelling mood that we all succomb to, the unique personalities (and stereotypes) of high school kids...we've all been there and we all remember what it was like when we view this movie...amazingly the movie was very adlibbed and featured non-actors (or at least beginners) who did an amazing job...I say this may be one of the most important movies of the year...the calm before the storm and the sky's outward rage and calm after the storm was amazing as was the sounds of the woods when the kids were "hunting their prey" in the school