By CH Smith
The problem of violence in schools is about as easy to ignore as an elephant in your living room.
Gus Van Sant’s Elephant is the record of one day in high school, a day much like the one that left 13 people dead and made Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado "famous."
It’s a beautiful day, kids are doing what you did in high school, talking about what you talked about in high school and their experiences of high school are much like your experiences of high school: interesting, enlightening, distressing, depressing, brutal. It is about as close as you can get to a "normal" day. Then, in the split second it takes one student to walk past another, it all changes.
The 2003 Cannes Golden Palm winner offers absolutely no insight into the causes or even the effects of violent school shooting sprees like that of Columbine–one of eight to rock America between 1997 and 1999. As he has done in films like My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, Van Sant displays a tender interest in young people and an exceptionally acute understanding of the young mind on the brink of adulthood, hoping people will realize the mystery of violence in high school can never be solved.
The cast of Elephant only includes three professional actors, all playing adult roles, while the rest are all played by real high school students from the Portland area Van Sant calls home.
Van Sant asked his cast questions like "Do you feel safe in school? Does this happen? What happens in your life?" to shape the improvisational script. By casting real high school students and being largely improvisational, Elephant effortlessly captures the essence of the high school experience.
Along with the effectiveness of the improvisational approach of Elephant, the film has an aesthetic quality unlike any movie I have seen in a while.
The aesthetic formula for Elephant is near-identical to the formula used on Gerry, Van Sant’s obscure but critically acclaimed work starring Matt Damon and Casey Afleck.
Shot in 1:33 ratio (like the old projectors in high school), Elephant is visually stunning, with long slow tracking shots quietly revealing both the environment and students. Some interesting sound design and a very minimal musical soundtrack consisting of Beethoven’s "Für Elise" and Piano Symphonies Nos. 2 and 14 complete the undeniable beauty of the film.
By framing something as brutal as a school massacre in such beauty, Van Sant has achieved something worthy of his Golden Palm, he has made an "anti-violence" film.