6) Elephant
Partly structured around the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, Elephant is a fictional account of a school shooting, perpetrated by two marginalized, male teenagers. It is written, directed and edited by Gus Van Sant, and features a cast of hitherto unknown young actors. Van Sant’s choice to continue working on the script throughout the filming process – giving the young performers room to improvise and help determine the direction of scenes – creates a naturalistic feel to the piece that is both chilling and, ultimately, devastating.
The setting is a non-descript high school in a non-descript community. There is nothing special or significant about it – there are no specific social problems depicted here that aren’t evident in every town and every educational institution catering to teenagers. There are cliques and bullies and disaffected youths; there are children dealing with problematic home lives and struggling with academic pressure; then there are two friends – Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen) – who we see calmly buying weapons on the internet and planning an armed assault on their school.
The subject matter of the film is disturbing enough, but it is the tone in which Van Sant sets out this chain of events that makes it both a masterpiece, and a movie you’ll only want to watch once. What he succeeds in doing is presenting a fictional, narrative story about a horrific crime, entirely without judgement. The whole thing is cold and matter-of-fact – reflecting the demeanour and attitude of the two murderous boys perfectly. This overall atmosphere of cool detachment only compounds the horror, as the teens begin to stalk the halls, picking off their fellow students one by one.
Elephant is a film that will stay with you long after its upsetting final scene has played out. It is uncomfortable, because Gus Van Sant employs no dramatic trickery here. There is no spoon-feeding, or suggestion of how the audience should feel about what they are watching. He simply holds a mirror up to society and invites us to take a look at what we are doing – and not doing – to our teenagers. Then he leaves us alone – holding that mirror and staring into the abyss – listening to our own thoughts, and drawing our own conclusions. Truly, there is nothing scarier than that.
