Elephant

Rating:
Summary: This is life - deal with it!
Review: A Viewer from Houston wrote:

"the whole movie is kids walking the halls, a kid playing a piano for 10 minutes, 5 minutes of kids getting randomly shot. Thats it. Boring and pointless."

This viewer seems to get the point of the movie, but he then dismisses it as useless. Apparently his expectations were geared towards more drama, meaning, and some kind of neater explanation. The problem is, life isn't like that. Most of our lives are spent doing rather mundane things, and the reality of violence is often shockingly mundane, and not anywhere near as simplistic, exciting, and cathartic as movies like 'Die Hard' would have us believe.

With 'Elephant', Gus van Sant has given us a slice of life and death without any of the crass manipulation or romanticism of violence that American viewers are routinely fed by the medium. Finally, an American movie that is allowing us to think, rather than telling us what to think. The fact that many reviewers are left feeling empty and unfulfilled by this movie tells us a great deal about their expectations when they enter a movie theatre. It's a sad commentary that rather than demanding that movies serve as a stimulus for existing human consciousness, the vast majority of today's moviegoers expect to be force fed the emotion and intellect that should already reside within them.

This is the best movie I've seen in a long while. But when you see it, make sure you bring your mind along with you.

Rating:
Summary: Harrowing and fascinating.
Review: In ELEPHANT, director Gus Van Sant provides us with a day in the life of a high school, seen literally from the perspective of several students. Life in high school is presented realistically as boring. Some people have good times; others don't. Even the awkward girl isn't given many scenes to generate sympathy for her character. As a viewer, you don't really get to know much about any of the characters. You see that some of them are talented. Some of them are troubled. Some of them are just going through the motions.

Going into the film, you should be aware that a shooting will happen on this day. But, while watching it, you don't know when it's going to happen, who's going to do it, who's going to live or who's going to die. But the sense of dread you get builds as the film goes along.

Once the film identifies the shooters, we get a brief glimpse of their home life. We see how they got the guns. We get only an idea of the sort of video games they play, the films they watch, the drawings they've created. (The only real elephant seen in the film is a drawing that one of the killers has done and placed on his wall. He doesn't talk about it. We just see it.) We see one of them is a really good piano player. We see that he gets occasionally picked on by bullies, but we don't get the sense that he's overcome with a need for vengeance. We see the killers speak of the last day of their lives, and they kiss. We don't know if it's the first time they have done this. We don't know if they're gay or straight. I got the sense that this is the only time that they'll get a chance to kiss anyone, so they kiss each other. (Van Sant himself is gay, which I think is key. He's not suggesting that gay people are killers. But he's not saying that the killers in his film weren't repressed homosexuals, either. In the scene, he's saying that homosexuality alone cannot be seen as a reason for the violence.) No real motive is provided by the film itself, but you get hints of what actions other people will blame after the fact.

The film, in this extended scene outside of the school moreso than any other, shows the point that the filmmaker intends - that there is no way to determine the causes of this sort of violence and that there are no messages or clearly defined "heroes" and "villains" within such violence. Van Sant supplies the audience with a glimpse of several things that will be examined and dissected by others in the community within the film in the aftermath of the violence.

But, in taking us inside the school during the shooting, he shows us that it is random, brutal, unmotivated and cold violence. It has no reasons or explanations, because nothing this tragic can be blamed on any one thing. The killers even deserve some consideration because they're children, just like the other victims.

The film is excellent and thought-provoking, though it's bleak and sad.

Rating:
Summary: perfect
Review: I was a senior in high school when columbine happened and this film hit me harder then any other film has ever hit me. I went to film school and I know what kind of film can be harsh and be hard to watch but this film really gets across what can happen with high schoolers now a days. I am not going to go into gun laws and death penalties but I am twenty-two and I have experienced it first hand. This being said I loved the film and I hope some people get a little good ouf of it without making a judgement. I loved it period.

Rating:
Summary: The calm before the storm.
Review: This film has received quite polarizing reviews; some praised its understated brilliance while others bashed it for its lack of action and dialogue and its tortoise-like pace. In my opinion ELEPHANT falls somewhere in between. The viewer is introduced to a variety of students at an anonymous high school in America. The camera follows behind them as the students engage in their everyday activities resulting in a clear sense of being a voyeur. There are periodic sound bites of somber piano music along with many stretches of the silence of walking down the school hallway. The tone of the beginning of this film reminds me of the calm before the storm: the interplaying of scenes of the two kids mail ordering guns and target practicing in the garage is a clear indication that something big is about to happen and there's no way to warn the others.

There is little doubt that ELEPHANT is far from the center of filmmaking. It fails to explain any reasoning behind the massacre of the school shooting and the viewer is left with an unsettled taste in their stomach, especially after watching the final scene. However, this aspect clearly mirrors how school shootings are always clouded in mystery as to the killers intentions and motivations. In a nutshell this film is simply one individual's interpretation of a Columbine-like event. Criticize or praise it, but at least try to get what Gus Van Sant was trying to say. 3.5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Weak
Review: Not recommended.
This movie didnt pull itself off. The only sub story with any sort of impact was Johns, as I feared for his father and brother. Every other substory was weak and just didnt work in my opinion.
Its pretty obvious what the desired effect of scenes of clouds passing and relentless corridor walking was in aid of, but it made the characters and impact of the film weak weak weak in the final analysis.
However, I knew when I searched this film up that some would love it, and sure enough alot do. So maybe its worth checking out.

Rating:
Summary: Too artsy
Review: The movies tries to be an artsy movie and goes no where. It spends too much time following mundane characters around and doesnt give any background. A worthless movie.

Rating:
Summary: What was the point?
Review: After reading the rave reviews this movie received from critics, including the Cannes Film Festival, I had high expectations. I was left with a feeling of pointlessness. I understand that the movie was trying to depict the occurrences as a real life event that is very anti-climatic due to the distance one places between themselves and the world around them. However, if van Sant was not going for shock value there are a few discrepancies I have with this movie. If the goal of this movie was not to shock then why the pointless scenes such as the girls going into the bathroom and regurgitating or the two boys making out in the shower? These scenes, I believe were not necessary to the plot of the movie and seemed as lame attempts to "rawly" portray a sensitive issue just to do it. I did like the anticlimactic aspect of the shootings but there was no substance behind this movie. I received nothing out of the time I put in to watch this and it would not matter if I had never seen it.

Rating:
Summary: Very Thought Provoking
Review: I thought this was an excellent film that still has me thinking about it days after I watched it. I find it very interesting that reviewers that liked the film as well as viewers that did not like it seemed to agree that it was pointelss. To me, it was not pointless at all.

Throughout the movie, we see several mundane interactions between several different groups of students, and we get to see these interactions from several different viewpoints. This helps paint the picture of an ordinary day in the life of a high school student. Early on we also see two teens dressed in camouflage with guns and we know something is going to go down. We get a glimpse of what happens to these kids during the course of their day. Nothing too out of the ordinary happens to these kids. Sure they are picked on at one point, but nothing too horrific that would justify shooting innocent people.

And that is just the point I got from the movie. Whenever tragic events such as Columbine happen, we are very quick to try and figure out what caused them. Is it the kid's parents? Is it the fact they listen to Marilyn Manson? Is it the way they are treated at school? If not, then what? The kids in the film have very normal parents, one plays the piano (Beethoven, no less), and when they see Hitler on TV they are not even very aware of who he is. They know him by name, but not by his actions.

This movie illustrates that some people, regardless of external factors, are just sociopaths and their actions cannot be explained by "normal" people. But that is just what I got out of it. This movie doesn't shove any beliefs into the viewer's face. The best thing you can do is just watch it and see what you personally get out of it.

Rating:
Summary: Torn...
Review: I don't know where I stand on this movie. I understand the use of the long, drawn out scenes, but I still just really hate them. If he had shortened those scenes some, I think the message would still have come across, I just think that 5 minutes of watching kids run in and out of frame was excessive.

That aside, I did like the manner in which the movie was presented, in that all the kids were connected in a sense in that one day. All in all, had some of the scenes been cut down, I would have really enjoyed this film even more. I would have to say though that this one is definitely worth checking out.

Rating:
Summary: a polarizing, difficult masterpiece
Review: It's difficult to review this film, because I can't think of anything else I can compare it to. I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything like it. That, in and of itself, is an accomplishment, and a sign of a great film. Another sign of a great film, I've discovered, is that days after viewing it, you're still thinking about it. And not just recalling scenes from it, but still pondering, still thinking about the characters and certain scenes and analyzing them in different ways. This film delivers on that count as well. Four days after watching it, it's still haunting me.

I'm not at all surprised by the negative reviews for this film, because it's a difficult film to watch. It's slow, it's subtle, it's non-linear, and it lacks any real stereotypes, cliches, or familiar film elements that viewers can instantly relate to. And yet it's strangely familiar, fascinating, touching, disturbing, funny, tragic, beautiful ... and then you realize why. Because it's real life.