Elephant is Gus Van Sant’s take on and testament to the Columbine shootings in 1999. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2003, Van Sant shows us a gaggle of teenagers going about their day, an utterly ordinary day, except for the machinations of two disturbed boys at the Portland high school portrayed in the film. The plain ordinariness of it all and Van Sant’s quiet direction, following the school’s photographer, the prom couple, the library nerd, makes the horror that follows at the end of the film even more impactful. Elephant is a bold, disturbing film. A film that does not moralize what happens but simply shows us an event stripped of biases. The title could not be more apt, there is an elephant in every high school in the nation, and in most cases we don’t even know it’s there.
My rating 8 out 10.
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