Film: Elephant

i just got back from seeing elephant, gus van sant's new film. its about a school shooting in oregon. i'm not sure what to think about it, the ending is still haunting me. i enjoyed it for the most part but thought it was over rated. the acting and dialouge was good, but not outstanding.

***SPOILER ALERT: if you read below here i am assuming you saw the movie***











i thought many of the characters were incredibly oblivious and naive. when the two killers walked into school carrying guns, only one person noticed. yet, three girls were eating lunch in the cafeteria and noticed a boy playing outside with his dog. plus, the janitor looked right at the two boys and went about sweeping the floor. how is that possible?

also, why do you think the movie is titled elephant? i'm clueless and would love to hear some ideas...

I saw this when it played in theatres here in Boston. I thought it was a good movie. Some of the shots that he used, like the single shot of the autumn outdoor playing field where everyone was playing sports, it was for like 7 minutes a still shot with no dialogue or music, some cool stuff you don't see in films these days.

Plus I thought it was cool how it was from different kids' perspectives, each perspective of one day. Kind of put you in their situation, yet just as an arbitrary viewer.

As to your complaints about the kids being oblivious, I think you gotta think about it realistically. The film portrayed these kids lives as somewhat mundane and uneventful, and that's the way these kids viewed the other kids as well, they just didn't care to notice them. The janitor could have thought they were a part of some sort of school play with toy guns or something, I dunno, there are a ton of excuses and reasons. I don't think this makes the characters oblivious or naive, but rather emphasizes just how monotonous the school environment is.

A little complaint I have, in fact, is that the movie portrayed the average school day as such a boring and mundane thing that it made my mood and impression of the movie the same for a bit. I started to get a bit bored. But then I realized all these kids were in the same day and it got my attention a bit more.

Just my thoughts.

**spoilers**

I really enjoyed this film. The way they protrayed high school was EXACTLY right on. The one thing I didn't like about this film was the "typicalness" of it all. Strictly in regards to the two boys... of course they watched people getting shot up on tv... and surfed guns.com.. and were secretly gay. I half expected for them to be listening to Marilyn Manson or Slipknot in the car on the ride there... give me a break.

Other than that I felt this movie was well done.

In response as to why this film is called Elephant.. the only thing I got was that one of the boys had a drawing (which he had obviously done himself) in his room of an elephant.

I haven't seen this yet as it doesn't open until next weekend here in London (I'll definitley be going) but there was an interview with Gus van Sant about it in last Friday's Independent, which you can read here:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/interviews/story.jsp?story=483694

Amongst other things, it explains why it's called Elephant.

thanks for that link. it was a very interesting read and cleared up some questions

For some reason this movie managed to slip under my radar. I will definitely be looking for it. Gus Van Sant movies are a always thought-provoking.

...

this was a good movie i guess. it's definately no comparison to dc or mopi but it was entertaining. some of it was sort of boring and some of the characters were one dimensional but i guess you can excuse thsi a tradeoff for realism.

elephant

try the poll , i hope

elephant... perhaps the old saying, or idea, cliche whatever... the elephant in the room no one talks about/wants to talk about?
this could go with many of the ideas- the boring life, the problem with the boys other saw but did nothing about, them being gay

which by the way.. whoa weird shower scene i didnt expect.

i thought it was a well done film. as -spiderman- mentioned a little slow and boring. but i really did like the almost total lack of a musical score
and the ending was nice

**spoiler**








i didnt expect jerry to shoot eric (i think i got the names in the right order)

I thought the movie was too slow and extremely boring. I wished the end would of actually been an end, not just the beggining of the "action" so to speak.

The buildup took too long and the climax was nothing amazing. They should have gone into what the kids in the school felt after the shooting instead of just focusing on the normal schoolday.

i think the film pushed the boundaries of what constitutes boring without crossing the line. this i believe was done to help convey the detached existence of the characters, illustrated perfectly via the long cuts and trivial dialogue.

it has been a long time since i've seen a film that utilizes camera and editing techniques to push the message home so brilliantly.

i wrote an unposted commentary on the film a fair while back, i'll see if i can find it and post my thoughts/ make them coherent.

If I'm not mistaken I think the actors were actually just schoolkids the director found to play the roles - hence the typicallity of it all.

Anway, I found the film to be awful. Terrible dialogue (again, pretty much just ad-libbing due to the fact that the film used amateurs and didn't have a script [I think] - if the film did have a proper script it wasn't good), very boring and very empty due to the indulgent cinematography and lack of music score.

The characters were so, so cliched. As mentioned above, gay, play violent-computer games and surf gun websites. Please - give them a trenchcoat and be done with it!

Weak!

^^^

the killers were not gay, they were going to die and thought "what the hell!".

It could be called elephant because there is a big problem going on thats right under our noses but we just dont pay to much attention to it. ? Or I could be el retardo

This was made with just normal kids as the actors. I didnt like how he followed kids walking accross a football field. That takes awhile and gets boring watching a jocks back for that long

it's called elephant because of one or more of the following...

earlier film on violence in schools with same title.
the elephant in the living room saying.
the logo of the republican party.

i believe it's all of the above.

film: elephant ***spoilers inside***

the poll... which should work this time...

silvia saint said:

i think the film pushed the boundaries of what constitutes boring without crossing the line. this i believe was done to help convey the detached existence of the characters, illustrated perfectly via the long cuts and trivial dialogue.

it has been a long time since i've seen a film that utilizes camera and editing techniques to push the message home so brilliantly.

Click to expand...

exactly, good film

Reverend_Lust said:

It could be called elephant because there is a big problem going on thats right under our noses but we just dont pay to much attention to it. ?

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was thinking: the elephant sitting in the corner that everyone tries to ignore.