I watched Elephant on google video. It is a pointless film. The director is clearly visually talented, but I feel that his talents are put to waste in this art-house exercise. It would have actually held more power if it were shot in a more detached, documentarian manner; than the film noir style that it was shot it. Or he could have shot it in the film noir style that he did, if he had constructed some kind of actual plot and story to go along with it. A film should say more than one thing. He could have achieved the same end product that he has now, if he would have limited it to just 1 or 2 scenes(the first and the last). The film, in this form, would still be no masterpiece, but it would be less of a waste of time.

The way that I approach a film critically, is with the knowledge that it requires less technical artistic skill to produce a film, than it does to produce a painting. A film is a series of moving photographs, so film is superior to photography, and requires more technical skill to make a sustained series of film sequences than to take a series of photographs. Painting > Film > Photography

With that said, film can be elevated to the realm that the great paintings occupy, but this requires that it borrows elements from literature and drama, to give the work more layers and meaning.

Elephant does not do this. I am much more effected by the still photo of the vietnamese guy getting shot in the head point blank, than by watching this noir without a storyline.