vladp6 I rarely review films. But this time I'm going to do that. The film is bad, really bad. I can hardly call it a film at all. Those who give praises and high ratings to this film should be put in that school as a sacrifice for wasting our time. There is absolutely nothing watchable, nothing happens until the last 10 minutes of the film. Believe me, what you are going to watch is just a first- or third-person walk along the corridors of the school. Camera on a shoulder of an operator follows one person walking from behind for 5 minutes, then another person for 5 minutes. Most of the time these persons are silent, sometimes they give comments, sometimes they meet someone and the camera switches to someone else. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens. Why there are so positive reviews, what people like in this film is beyond my comprehension. After 10 minutes of this torture, I've already wanted to switch it off, but then I thought may be there will be something else, may be the characters will start acting or at least talking, it couldn't be that people give 7.2 rating for nothing! Another 10 minutes of walking along the corridors of the school, now the same scenes and same walking but with different people, scenes started to repeat themselves. I've started feeling like someone was fooling me into watching this camera play. Another 10 minutes of walking the same corridors again and again made me angry. I've eventually fast forwarded to the last 15 minutes to see what's all this fuss about. After suffering 5 minutes of the same walking, two students bought guns and armour on-line, received them by post, kissed each other in a shower, dressed like rembos and went shooting everyone in that school, just for fun, as they said to each other. I couldn't understand their motives, because the creators of this "film" did not care about any plot and about making the characters to talk. So, do you want to tell me that just because of the last 10 minutes of heartless shooting everyone in the school this film is worse 7.2 rating???

ElMaruecan82 In fact, it's a 10 minus one point for the nausea it made me feel.I don't think I'll ever watch it again, the Golden Palm winner of 2003 is probably one of the most affecting and disturbing cinematic viewings I've ever experiences. I don't think I ever felt that way since I saw "In Cold Blood", but "In Cold Blood" had me trembling and crying during the climactic massacre, in "Elephant", just the anticipation of what was going to happen made me feel uncomfortable, and when the shootout started, I just waited for the nightmare to end. I applaud the tactful approach of Gus Van Sant to have made the film so short, eighty minutes are enough...... or are they?Even these eighty minutes felt like three hours once I knew where this was leading to, my belly was hurting literally. Gus Van Sant follows the lives of many high school students but without the usual fuss about it, once you get used to someone, the camera abandons its subject for another one. The point isn't even to put a spotlight, just to show as many people as possible, a bespectacled outcast, a photography buff, three anorexic girls who act like divas and debate about the time one of them spends with her boyfriends, a group taking part to a debate session, and the blonde kid with the yellow T-shirt and the drunk father.At first, you're trying to find a reason why these boys and girls are being shown, surely they must have a significance to the story, surely one of them will do something, it can't be just gratuitous exposition... but there's something in the way Gus Van Sant handles the camera, it's like just 'happening' to be there, just random, as if it was floating in the air. Indeed, there's a sense of melancholic atmosphere, as if the day was meant to be just another boring autumn day with no fuss to make about it, and that no one ever expected it to be "special", just another autumn day in Portland, Ore, carried by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata". While being conventionally 'normal', there is some disturbing foreshadowing when they all talk about plans for the next two hours, perhaps the only hints of subtle screenwriting.And then we see the two killers-to-be, again no over-exposition apart from the fact that they've planned everything and now they are going to die. The film prepares us to what will be a bloodbath and in my heart, I was just hoping that Van Sant would stop the film before it ends, I didn't want the violence to happen, to know it would happen was enough, but I was like "OK, I got the point, they're all going to die, why do you need to show it", but as painful as it was to witness the killings, it was necessary, because the real test of the film is how violence would be portrayed. I think one of the triumphs of a movie is to make violence so ugly you don't want it to happen, but "Elephant" makes it even uglier when it happens.It is ugly because it's cold and random and arbitrary, the antithesis of cinema where everything is governed by a narrative, where even violence should have a point. In Van Sant's film, there's absolutely no style whatsoever, some deaths are shown on-screen, some off-screen, some are suggested, even the killers are focused like in a paintball game, as if the point was to make the bloodiest mess, but without a sense of enjoyment, they do it because someway, they feel they had to do it or wanted to do it. But again, Van Sant doesn't try to make a statement about violence, just to show how it happens, how it can come at any point, any moment. We all believe we have a destiny, one can dream to be a photographer or a star or just to get the hell out of school, but these beliefs don't amount to much in a world where being at the wrong place at the wrong moment equals death.The film was inspired by the Columbine shooting of 1999 but I think the film is relevant regardless of any context. Today, people can walk on the street and be randomly stabbed to death or ran over by a truck, one of the defining traits of violence is its banality, mundanity, the fact that it can pop up at any moment. Still, there's something extremely disturbing in the way the film portrays these shootings, it tries to give them an ideological value from the killers' POV but I don't think it's a matter of ideology, once you start to believe that there's a belief behind or a religion or an ideology, you lose the real scope. It's like watching "Schindler's List" and ending with the relief that these things wouldn't happen because Nazism belonged to the past.The point is that, for as long as there will be men, there will be men killing and enjoying killing other men, and they will be as civilized as that Nazi playing the piano during a ghetto massacre or the young killer playing Beethoven in "Elephant". Sure we have to find the reasons and yes, everything must be done to anticipate these things and avoid them but Van Sant tries to be as neutral as possible, he knows even NRA supporters would weep at the end of "Elephant", so he won't rationalize these shootings as if one was the consequence of this or the cause of that, he won't show these kids enjoying a violent movie before, he will just show you how easy it is to get a weapon and go commit a massacre. Everyone is up to his own interpretation. That's why the film is important. "Elephant" doesn't try to be a social commentary and it works as a challenge to people who think they've been desensitized with movies. Honestly, I didn't know what to think about these movies that make violence look cool or too stylized to be taken seriously, I don't think violence happens because it happens in movies but I've read that after watching "American Sniper" many Americans felt the urge to go shoot some Arabs on the street, I don't think a film like "Elephant" would provoke the same reaction, for me it worked like the 'Ludovico treatment' in "A Clockwork Orange", I was disgusted by guns, violence and any act of killing. Every once in a while, we need a movie to show what real violence is: ugly and definite. It's like a booster shot, although with 'downer' effects.And the film is a masterstroke of casting and directing, by taking unknown actors, Van Sant emphasizes the realness of the story but he does more, by focusing on various slices of life, the film challenges our own cinematic habits, inherited from hundreds and hundreds of cinematic viewings, we're so used to see ugly ducklings become pretty or outcasts committing suicide, kids becoming heroes, or villains getting their comeuppance that "Elephant" will provide a necessary yet bitter slice of reality. Don't expect any of these conventions, I won't spoil the film's most brilliant moment, let's just say it involves a guy named Benny.The minute Benny emphasizes what is so intelligent and remarkable about "Elephant", and also so disturbing, again, a painful experience, but necessary like a medicine.

adbeer-47919 "Elephant" is basically a film made for testing how to use the camera. It has a very shallow plot and the main psychopaths in the film don't have an obvious reason to shoot up the school at the end. Although it is very very well made in filming. It has a LOT of long shots in the film that were very impressive to look at and the cinematography was a lot like how "Son of Saul" filmed like. He always found a way to make the shot interesting instead of typical. Looking back on the film I think that if the film was filmed and presented typically then the film would be pretty bad. Another defining quality of the film was of course the soundtrack. One of the psychopaths plays and listens to Beethoven. (Sounds familiar?) Anyways there was one scene where a character was walking casually in the school hallway and "Moonlight Sonata" was playing in the background and the scene was never really that dull or boring. I mean c'mon who doesn't feel relaxed listening to Beethoven. The film has three segments to it in my opinion. the first is filming the normal and casual lives of a bunch of teenagers in a high school which was somewhat captivating. The next is that one scene happens and lots of people are in that scene and it then tells the perspective of what happens until the shooting for each character. And lastly for the last 20 minutes is the shooting of the school. Which was pretty shocking for the way it was filmed. There were flaws though. The acting was pretty bad especially when people died in the end. There was literally one guy who was walking down the hall almost kind of casually, and he walks behind one of the psychos and of course he gets shot. The blond haired kid saw the psychos going into the school and tried to tell people but the way he reacted was like it didn't matter that much. There isn't really any development of the characters or the story at all. It was like they were just there because ultimately it is a film to experiment with what a camera can do.

Dan Hodges A film that lacks the depth and tact to handle its very sensitive subject matter with the sort of respect it deserves. It fails to offer a fresh take on the incident and feels like it is simply using its high profile to create shock for shock's sake. Furthermore, the gross simplification of the idea that media and art can create violent tendencies in young people (an idea that was heavily debated at the time) is presented with possibly the single worst fake- video-game-in-a-film I have ever seen. In a scene where one of the shooters is playing a fake first-person-shooter game that looks like it was made in less than 20 minutes using MS Paint and the most basic 3D animating tool and is never expanded upon. This theme of media influence comes up once more throughout the film, where the shooters are seen watching and being seemingly engrossed by a documentary about Adolf Hitler and the power of propaganda in Nazi Germany. I can only assume this scene was intended to show that the school shooters were obsessed with Hitler and the Nazis, presumably meant to be shocking but in a way that came off as "oh, these kids are interested in the Nazis? Well, no wonder they would be capable of a thing like this".I'm generally a fan of Gus Van Sant's films but Elephant filled me with disgust and disappointment. I expected a more tactfully-considered and respectfully handled piece from a director whose work I typically find to be unique and thought-provoking. Instead I got voyeuristic and ill- conceived trash with forced shock value and an undeserved weight garnered only by the notoriety of the Columbine school-shooting.