Movie Review: Elephant

It's hard to review this film, due to the personal nature of it's presentation. I was deeply effected by the events of what happened at Columbine High School so many years ago. The wounds go deep. It almost effects me a bit more then the issues related 9/11 and the current fallout. I say this as a precaution for you the reader--my bias I cannot explain for privacy reasons, but it will most certainly be evident in this review, I'm sure.

I saw this movie for a variety of reasons. I like art movies, that much we have established. I like gay and lesbian issues and this had two, a minor plot element and a gay director. And of course, for more personal levels that I choose not to explain. The title is borne of the concept of an elephant being in the room and no one is talking about it.

It's EXACTLY how I felt about the Columbine massacre. Acts of violence are sad, wholly evil entities that devour more than they kill, meaning we might see the immediate piles of blood, but the effect lingers via survivors and onlookers. Looking at that standpoint, the issues at Columbine were an expression of some of this societies' ills personified. Michael Moore, who I do love as a filmmaker emphasized the issue of guns in this nation in the award winning Bowling for Columbine. It's an excellent analysis. Guns are too widely available.

But it isn't the only issue of what happened at Columbine. Like September 11th's committee just announced, it was a series of unfortunate events that worked in tandem to create the short lived hell.

I look at it symbolically.

The boys were in a microcosm of the world outside. Like the striated system of the haves and the have-nots, where everyone is filed into those who are above and those who are below, these boys were told they were to be the bottom. They were teased. They were mocked. And they lashed out.

The problem was, they did have everything, everything that could keep them happy. The confusion had begun. They could not experience the world as they were promised.

Sounds like most of America. We are promised we should dream big. But we will not get part of that pie, people, it's becoming more and evident to me.

*I'm going to go out on a limb and off on a tangent here, for I know of no other place to mention it. The killers' parents denied being part. They said they didn't know what their boys were doing. They just handed them the cash and moved on. I don't buy it one iota. I have too many friends with kids, know too many families. I cannot have kids of my own. A person who doesn't know what their kids are doing should not be having kids. It's part of loving and living in a family. Those parents were part of the issue, and it angers me greatly that they deny it. There, I've said it. Back to the story.

Their families aren't even mentioned in this movie. Instead, we are given glimpses, through a series of flashbacks, of these youngsters' lives. The movie rewinds, and we see them from a different angle. Their dialogue is unrehearsed and difficult to hear, as if real. Their costumes  are merely the actor's clothing. And each take goes on and on and on and on, without edit, like life.

So where's the movie part? Instead of dealing with the issues, the filmmaker goes and creates art so severe, he alienates  of those who are to benefit from the message. Did I say message? There is no comment as to the reason for the murder spree. It's sad really, that such a touchy subject is given barely the lipservice it deserves. I'm hurt.

Art is created and does not truly live until it is seen. A book is written and has yet to find life until it is read by someone. You hang kids' pictures on the fridge, not really looking for comments, but the art doesn't live until someone looks at it, correct?

Here is a situation where there is too much art. It's as if Gus Van Sant, the director, made it to defy criticism. You can't look at it, you can't be empathetically to this movie. It's that surreal. The art part never comes to life.

And as for the famed homoerotic overtones? What? The killers kiss, out of range of the focus of the camera. So? All it said to me was that they might have been getting out their homosexual urges via massacre. I don't buy it. It wasn't developed at all. It angers me further.

It's sad really. I'm thinking of working on a similar story just to justify this all.