Elephant: A Film By Gus Van Sant

Starring:Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson (IX), Elias McConnell, Jordan Taylor (II), Carrie Finklea, Nicole George (II), Brittany Mountain, Alicia Miles, Kristen Hicks, Bennie Dixon, Nathan Tyson, Timothy Bottoms, Matt Malloy, Chantelle Chriestenson, Ellis Williams, Kim Kenney, Marci Buntrock, Roman Ostrovsky, Vana O'Brien
Director: Gus Van Sant
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Elephant, the elegant and unsettling movie from Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting), depicts students at a high school before and during a harrowing, Columbine-style shooting. The movie follows one young boy who takes over the wheel from his drunken dad while returning from lunch, then loops back in time and follows another student who crosses paths with the first, then loops back and follows another--all captured in long, unedited tracking shots that are serene and unhurried, even when two boys in camouflage gear, carrying heavy bags, arrive at the school and begin shooting. Elephant doesn't attempt to explain their behavior; it simply places the audience back in the brief yet interminable window of adolescence, when life is trivial and painfully important at the same time. Your reaction to Elephant will depend as much on your life experiences as anything in the movie itself. --Bret Fetzer

Description

Winner of the Palme d'Or and Best Director prizes at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Gus Van Sant's (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester) Elephant takes us inside an American high school on one, single ordinary day that very rapidly turns tragic. Elephant demonstrates that high school life is a complex landscape where the vitality and beauty of young lives can shift from light to darkness with surreal speed. It's an ordinary high school day. Except that it's not.

DVD Features:
Featurette:On the Set of Elephant: "Rolling Through Time"
Full Screen Version
TV Spot:HBO Films Spot
Theatrical Trailer

Customer Reviews:

The terrible future nestled behind doors.......2007-06-11

Gus van Saint surprised to many people with this singular picture that explores with crude realism the frivolity, hopeless and miscarriage existence of two teenagers who assume the world is like a video game when you can kill and win points. After a extremely slow introductory section that consummates three quarter parts of the film, we may realize how the troubled mind of these young murderers take over their ambitious plans.

There is explicit violence and for many viewers may become unbearable. For many reasons that you and me are aware I would like you to watch in presence f your children for trying to avoid this movie might be regarded a cult movie like "Natural born killers" achieving a distorted pattern's behavior.

Brutal and devastating, not for squeamish.

AHHHHHHHHHHH.......2007-06-03

WARNING STAY AWAY, HORRIBLE MOVIE. If you like watching people walking around and doing nothing for over an hour, then this movie is for you. This was honestly the worse movie that I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of movies.

Eerie and haunting nightmare.......2007-04-28

This film gives no explanation, no backstory, and no judgment as it presents a Columbine-esque tragedy at a high school: two boys plan to shoot as many people as they can on a regular afternoon when everyone is going about their business and nobody sees it coming. Here's an example of tracking shots that actually work in their extended form. You focus entirely on one person as that person goes through the mundane high school life: cafeteria, classroom, library, photo development, gossip, and the emotionless planning of the massacre too. Also an intriguing example of multiple versions of the same scenes as the focus shifts from one character to another.

Tragically beautiful film showcasing a great filmmaker.......2007-04-25

Elephant is an understated, incredibly haunting film account of how the day of the Columbine shootings might have progressed.

With long, amazingly detailed and subtle steadicam shots (most several minutes in length), director Gus Van Sant follows his cast of characters through their typical daily school lives. Although some reviewers may call this tactic "boring", I think they're missing the point entirely. This isn't a subject or a story that requires quick cuts and shaky character development to tell.

What Van Sant manages to do is to show, in a beautifully tragic way, just how ordinary the school day was, and how surprising and explosive the events really were or could be.

Following the long shots, at several points overlapping from different angles and different characters, the audience begins to create a visual image of all the activity occuring on a school campus at any given time. The understated performances by all the young actors add another layer of perfection to the film by making it all feel painfully realistic.

When the shooting finally does start, in the last 10 minutes of the film, it's almost like the viewer has been lulled into a false sense of security, much like the students in the school have been. Overall, this film is terrifically and tastefully done and it's definitely worth watching whether you're interested in Columbine or not. Elephant is just good filmmaking.

The DVD is 2-sided with the feature on one side and special features on the other. The special features are pretty weak. There's a making of featurette, but it's pretty much the worst making of I've ever seen. There's no discussion from the director on what he was trying to do or say, there's a few different cast members describing what their definition of violence is... other than that it's just shots of them making the film.

Bowling With Gus.......2007-03-23

A fairly tedious exercise of particularly contentious issues which deserves far more committed, engaged behaviour from its director, Van Sant. The unfolding of the pointless mayhem is told in interweaving, elegant hand held camera style, all very collegiate in concept, and, really, in intellectual content. Van sant falls for the old gag of content being held in contempt by form, or art for art's sake. Dangerous stuff when you play a nihilistic hand in dealing with nihilistic, adolescent behaviour. There simply isn't sufficient depth, no explanatory power in this cheap entertainment. Get the scene of the killer kids lounging in the bedroom. Blondey looks at his computer game which displays rear-view figures and takes them out in turn. Camera swings to rear view of actual conspirator buddy and lover, also from rear and displaying identical anonymity as the game. All too easy a swing here, Gus. Get real.

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