7.02.2004
gus van sant's elephant
(well, i'm officially becoming a gus van sant fan. i never liked his earlier stuff too much, even the credible shit before good will hunting and the other chase-your-dreams flick he made after it, ol' whatsitsface.)
elephant makes a nice companion piece to gerry, which i posted about (scroll all the way down) a while back. both are essentially plotless, even if elephant does flirt a bit more with movie conventions. both focus largely on movement-- and walking in particular-- and are shot with a cool formal eye that feels both mechanical and beautiful.
and i should, inevitably, mention that elephant is a "columbine" movie, at least in that it ends with a columbine-like massacre. click on my link (on the film's title) for endless reviews about its lack of conclusions, as well as a lively debate as to whether or not that is a good thing. suffice to say, i think it's a good thing. and a hell of a lot more respectful than you'd expect from a film on the topic.
but the columbine stuff is one ingredient among many. the film follows a cast of a half dozen or so characters as they go about their relatively mundane day. if i have one complaint about the film, it's that it never feels quite as natural as van sant seems to want it to be. the students are a little too hip to seem effectively "high school," and the slice-of-life aspects of the productio feel a bit mis-managed. concurrently, van sant is quite fetishistic in his choice of youngsters-- from the bleached-blond-kurt-cobain cherub with an alcoholic dad to the charismatic "ugly duckling" who won't wear shorts to gym class-- and he never finds the right balance between artifice and realism in the end. all of this seems intentional, but it only occasionally works out.
the real brilliance of elephant is in its approach to content. van sant lays it on thick, in a way-- moving matter-of-fact-ly from alienation and pregnancy and bulimia to the inevitable bloodbath, leaving a chain of "issues" in his wake. somehow, this seems to dismantle any sort of agenda rather than cultivate one. it's particularly compelling when the film approaches cliché, and butts up against our expectations at their most superficial. the film is, in a way, brilliantly superficial-- a series of tight, warholian surfaces that jut out with great innocence. we watch as issue after issue gets dragged along the high school hallway, and the experience is akin to that of content breaking down. by film's end, one has ninety minutes worth of prejudicial affect, all abandoned by an orchestrating superego of any sort. to state the obvious, it challenges the viewer to fill in the blanks-- and finds its dignity in emerging as a kind of empty vessel.
my one reservation in the above synopsis is in the film's treatment of homosexuality, and its not neccessarily a deep reservation. but it does seem to me that a number of things are going on in the film that require, for better or worse, being "in the know," in regards to sexual behavior. there are moments of subtle homo-erotic tension that i wouldn't have noticed were it not for my years of living vicariously through ed. and as a straight white simpleton, the choice to portray the attackers as a kind of jean genet variation on bonnie and clyde is one of the film's most inexplicable. and most engaging. in fact, the touchier the cliché the film offers up (i'm thinking also of its sole african american character-- a kind of anti-anti-hero), the greater the resonance that emerges. and such ingredients emerge, in a sense, without anything to offer. you sorta have to see it to know what i mean.
elephant makes a nice companion piece to gerry, which i posted about (scroll all the way down) a while back. both are essentially plotless, even if elephant does flirt a bit more with movie conventions. both focus largely on movement-- and walking in particular-- and are shot with a cool formal eye that feels both mechanical and beautiful.
and i should, inevitably, mention that elephant is a "columbine" movie, at least in that it ends with a columbine-like massacre. click on my link (on the film's title) for endless reviews about its lack of conclusions, as well as a lively debate as to whether or not that is a good thing. suffice to say, i think it's a good thing. and a hell of a lot more respectful than you'd expect from a film on the topic.
but the columbine stuff is one ingredient among many. the film follows a cast of a half dozen or so characters as they go about their relatively mundane day. if i have one complaint about the film, it's that it never feels quite as natural as van sant seems to want it to be. the students are a little too hip to seem effectively "high school," and the slice-of-life aspects of the productio feel a bit mis-managed. concurrently, van sant is quite fetishistic in his choice of youngsters-- from the bleached-blond-kurt-cobain cherub with an alcoholic dad to the charismatic "ugly duckling" who won't wear shorts to gym class-- and he never finds the right balance between artifice and realism in the end. all of this seems intentional, but it only occasionally works out.
the real brilliance of elephant is in its approach to content. van sant lays it on thick, in a way-- moving matter-of-fact-ly from alienation and pregnancy and bulimia to the inevitable bloodbath, leaving a chain of "issues" in his wake. somehow, this seems to dismantle any sort of agenda rather than cultivate one. it's particularly compelling when the film approaches cliché, and butts up against our expectations at their most superficial. the film is, in a way, brilliantly superficial-- a series of tight, warholian surfaces that jut out with great innocence. we watch as issue after issue gets dragged along the high school hallway, and the experience is akin to that of content breaking down. by film's end, one has ninety minutes worth of prejudicial affect, all abandoned by an orchestrating superego of any sort. to state the obvious, it challenges the viewer to fill in the blanks-- and finds its dignity in emerging as a kind of empty vessel.
my one reservation in the above synopsis is in the film's treatment of homosexuality, and its not neccessarily a deep reservation. but it does seem to me that a number of things are going on in the film that require, for better or worse, being "in the know," in regards to sexual behavior. there are moments of subtle homo-erotic tension that i wouldn't have noticed were it not for my years of living vicariously through ed. and as a straight white simpleton, the choice to portray the attackers as a kind of jean genet variation on bonnie and clyde is one of the film's most inexplicable. and most engaging. in fact, the touchier the cliché the film offers up (i'm thinking also of its sole african american character-- a kind of anti-anti-hero), the greater the resonance that emerges. and such ingredients emerge, in a sense, without anything to offer. you sorta have to see it to know what i mean.
