Gus Van Sant's "Elephant"
| Published 11/03/04

Graphic by: Doni Neel

Those words were written in praise of Gus Van Sant's "Elephant," which won the Best Director and the Palme d'Or awards at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

The film also upset some critics. "Elephant" is about an ordinary day in high school that turns into tragedy and was based on the Columbine shootings.

Van Sant's film follows a group of characters through their daily routine in high school. Each character experiences high school differently. John has to deal with his alcoholic dad. Elias takes pleasure in his photography and spends a lot of time shooting pictures on campus. Nathan is athletic and popular; his girlfriend, Carrie, adores him. Brittany, Jordan and Nicole are a social clique and have affections for Nathan. Michelle is an outsider and has insecurity problems. Alex (one of the shooters) gets bullied at school.

The plot is non-linear and focuses on the day in the life of a particular character and then focuses on another character's daily routine. The audience never gets to know these characters well; no background information is provided about them. But by following these characters around, the audience gets a glimpse at their lives in high school. Van Sant decided to take an objective point-of-view for the movie. By showing instead of telling, the audience gets a lot of information about each character.

This upset some critics. Because "Elephant" has an objective point-of-view it doesn't give an explanation for why the shootings happened. Explanations for the shootings are only implied, and even this is done in an objective way. Alex orders machine guns over the internet. Eric (the other shooter) plays violent video games, among other things.

Todd McCarthy of "Variety" wrote that Van Sant's objective point-of-view was "pointless at best and irresponsible at worst." But the same Gus Van Sant fan site said, "'Elephant' is particularly brilliant because it eschews finger pointing and false politics in favor of meditating on the problem itself." This will leave you begging the question: why did these people have to die?