My review of "Elephant."

In ELEPHANT, director Gus Van Sant provides us with a day in the life of a high school, seen literally from the perspective of several students. Life in high school is presented realistically as boring. Some people have good times; others don't. Even the awkward girl isn't given many scenes to generate sympathy for her character. As a viewer, you don't really get to know much about any of the characters. You see that some of them are talented. Some of them are troubled. Some of them are just going through the motions.

Going into the film, you should be aware that a shooting will happen on this day. But, while watching it, you don't know when it's going to happen, who's going to do it, who's going to live or who's going to die. But the sense of dread you get builds as the film goes along.

Once the film identifies the shooters, we get a brief glimpse of their home life. We see how they got the guns. We get only an idea of the sort of video games they play, the films they watch, the drawings they've created. (The only real elephant seen in the film is a drawing that one of the killers has done and placed on his wall. He doesn't talk about it. We just see it.) We see one of them is a really good piano player. We see that he gets occasionally picked on by bullies, but we don't get the sense that he's overcome with a need for vengeance. We see the killers speak of the last day of their lives, and they kiss. We don't know if it's the first time they have done this. We don't know if they're gay or straight. I got the sense that this is the only time that they'll get a chance to kiss anyone, so they kiss each other. (Van Sant himself is gay, which I think is key. He's not suggesting that gay people are killers. But he's not saying that the killers in his film weren't repressed homosexuals, either. In the scene, he's saying that homosexuality alone cannot be seen as a reason for the violence.) No real motive is provided by the film itself, but you get hints of what actions other people will blame after the fact.

The film, in this extended scene outside of the school moreso than any other, shows the point that the filmmaker intends - that there is no way to determine the causes of this sort of violence and that there are no messages or clearly defined "heroes" and "villains" within such violence. Van Sant supplies the audience with a glimpse of several things that will be examined and dissected by others in the community within the film in the aftermath of the violence.

But, in taking us inside the school during the shooting, he shows us that it is random, brutal, unmotivated and cold violence. It has no reasons or explanations, because nothing this tragic can be blamed on any one thing. The killers even deserve some consideration because they're children, just like the other victims.

The film is excellent and thought-provoking, though it's bleak and sad.