I warmed up to this very cold and clinical film on a 2nd viewing. I wish the performances were stronger and the last confrontation is really an unspectacular note to end on. It plays like The Shining in high school, which is both good and bad. There's a better movie to be made about this subject matter but Van Sant took an interesting approach regardless. GRADE: B
he likes beethoven, he is gay & he is keen on documentaries that assert for the millionth time the "uniqueness" of the nazi totalitarianism in the history of the 20th century - this makes him the perfect, cold-blooded killer. for the general information: hitler was a graduate of fine (visual) arts, so what about making the same film, but with john, the photographer, or any other artsy fellow there being the assassin.
i thought this flic would win me over, especially because of the first shot of that reverted F of an antenna over a green sky, like the first rebel letter of a "fuck off" manifesto poured onto the world's indifferent face. but then.. then it just sucked. maybe i am too sick of films associating a "sensitive" year with a cruel heart. it's like saying that punk aficionados would never kill a fly.
O filme procurou o outro lado, o lado das vitimas: tediante, desinteressante, e totalmente problemáticos, melhor, normais como estereótipos; um pouco de "figura de linguagem cinematográfica" com aquela cena do debate sobre "como identificar um gay na rua" aludindo a um possível caso entre os assassinos. Porém no fim, o filme ficou entre o dispensável e o hype do momento. Possui uma fotografia bonita.
Considering the film is essentially a retelling of columbine, I don't think much needs to be "said", nor is there much room for the director to be "pretentious". And funnily enough, you reasons for calling the director a pretentious twat are hilariously pretentious. Please expound upon your reasons why Beethoven, long shots, and a "pseudo serious tacking of homosexuality" in any way meet the criteria for pretentiousness. I can't wait to see what nonsense you come up with.
If Kubrick had lived another decade and done a film based upon a Columbine type school shooting incident, it would have been very similar in style and content to Elephant. An excellent film that is very close to being a masterpiece, albeit flawed by Van Sant's rather fumbling and unnecessary tacking on of homosexuality into the storyline (as he does with most of his films). 4.5 stars.
One of the most accurate and beautiful unifications of style and content I can recall, could conceivably be called perfect.
this started out as a pretty precise portrait of high school and its students, but it suddenly went full-tilt out of control and just started to become really terrible. this film had SO much potential to be beautiful & disturbing but it ended up being stupid and confusing. it was cool intersecting different characters at one shot but this movie was too short to be explained. very let down.
So hard to watch. Though visually it's possibly one of the most beautiful films I've seen.
An extensive amount of tracking behind or in front of people walking down hallways. The movie itself had a great concept but it lacked an interesting visual representation. That's just my opinion though. It had the potential to be so much better if more captivating shots were used, but instead the film seemed to drag on and the tracking shots appeared to be in place to "fill in time."
Una sola cosa, que creo que es el mayor logro de esta película: la narración de la interioridad a partir de los exteriores y de la forma en que éstos se filman.
De los personajes apenas tenemos vistazos: una pareja que podría estar embarazada, un adolescente con un padre alcóholico, una chica solitaria a la que no le gusta usar shorts, dos chicos que carecen de amor familiar y de los que abusan en la escuela... datos de los que Van Sant se ocupa en segundos, apenas deteniéndose en bosquejar a sus personajes. Y sin embargo, ¡cuánto sabemos de sus vidas contemplando esas largas tomas de pasadizos desolados, calles suburbanas vacías, cuartos desordenados! Conocemos a sus personajes (lo que sienten, cómo experimentan el mundo) ya del todo tan sólo observando los escenarios que transitan. Esto, creo, es nuevo y absolutamente fascinante.
3.5. Normalità, calma, la tenerezza di tante piccole vite. E insieme gelo, tensione, inquietudine, che sempre si nascondono dentro e intorno ad esse.
A rollicking zenmaster drunk on the possibilities of narrative abandon, Gus Van Sant works in a post Bela Tarr style to create what is probably his greatest film by leaps and bounds ahead of his other work.
Okay i've got a big question , why these 2 crazy guy shoot em up all? Is there something wrong with their mind or what... and the film does not explain it and there's make a film too awkward. And the ending is too strange to.
Powerful, of course, but it's hard to relent yourself to something like this. I don't imagine it's supposed to be loved - it's about how it makes you think and feel.
Radnje skoro pa nema. Zanimljiva ideja sa kamerom kao pratiocem raznih ljudi kroz isti dan. Sve u svemu ... nista posebno. "Oni cili film tamo nešto akumuliraju ..."
This film was a turning point for me as an audience member. It will always be dear to me in that regard, my gateway drug to the power of cinema.
Elephant is almost too deliberately crafted that it works more in theory than execution. The parallel between hallway shots and first person shooter games is stressed ad nauseam. The eerie sci-fi quality added distance not just from the events unfolding (which rightly emphasizes the loss of a clear line between reality and virtual) but even the characters themselves are alienating.
